Many were hoping that with Vajpayee's NDA gone, there would be a return to the Congress normal. Nobody was prepared for the opposite. Sonia Gandhi was sceptical. This became the only issue over which Manmohan Singh took on his party bosses and risked his government. Politically, it was riskier than the 1991 reform, recalls Shekhar Gupta.
Sections of our media and elites take Western reports/judgements at face value and are ready to condemn the targets without understanding the deeper power linkages behind such actions, asserts Colonel Anil A Athale (Retd).
We no longer have the ambition to rival China save through words. We are happy to be fighting ourselves and digging up disputes from centuries ago as a substitute for real development, argues Aakar Patel.
Donald Trump's exaggerated opinion of his dealmaking capacity can get him into trouble, observes R Sriram.
The warmth and respect for India were evident wherever I went and noticed how most Latin Americans have Indian gurus either directly or online and yoga was very much in vogue, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Uzbekistan lives comfortably in several centuries but is also a forward-looking nation, Deepa Gahlot discovers on a visit to this Central Asian country.
India became only the third country to win both the men's and women's gold medals at the same Chess Olympiad.
The Russian embassy marked the 40th anniversary of the first space flight by an Indian, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, with an exhibition at the Russian Cultural Centre in New Delhi.
'It is the first technology in history which is not just a tool, it is an agent.' Yuval Noah Harari on the dangers on AI.
Vladimir Putin -- who only travels to countries (like China, North Korea) where he cannot be arrested and extradited to The Hague to face the International Court of Justice -- embraces Kim Jong Un on his arrival in Pyongyang early on Wednesday, June 19, 2024.
Indian chess prodigy D Gukesh sealed a remarkable Chess Olympiad campaign with a decisive victory over GM Vladimir Fedoseev on Sunday in Hungary.
Ma Durga might be the city's most celebrated annual visitor, but Kali is the resident Goddess, notes Sandip Roy.
Former World Rapid Chess champion Koneru Humpy wants the All India Chess Federation to increase women's tournaments.
The CAS banned teenage figure skater Kamila Valieva in January for four years for doping, effective from December 2021, a decision that also stripped the Russian Olympic Committee of its gold medal in the team event at the 2022 Games, nearly two years after the competition.
Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Erigaisi and Vaishali have trained at the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA) that the bespectacled chess wizard set up four years ago in Chennai. The 18-year-old Gukesh and the 19-year-old Praggnanandhaa have often stated that they would not be where they are without "Vishy sir".
India and Canada have mutually beneficial political and economic linkages. The two countries should get together and find a solution. The expulsion war should, in the meantime, be a guarantee against any deterioration of the situation, asserts Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, the first Indian head of mission to be ever expelled by any country.
Sitaram Yechury strived to have the country's Left movement shed its doctrinaire approach to India's socio-cultural complexities and stitch electoral and social alliances to fight the Sangh Parivar.
The United States continued their dominance of the Olympic 4x400 metres relay on Saturday but only just, as Rai Benjamin held off Botswana's Letsile Tebogo in a thrilling last-leg battle between two individual gold medallists.
Modi, who arrived in Warsaw on the first leg of his two-nation visit during which he will also travel to Ukraine, paid his tributes at the memorials for the Valivade-Kolhapur camp and the Monument to the Battle of Monte Cassino in Warsaw.
New Delhi has reached out to Moscow while waiting for a new president in Washington. New Delhi knows well that in international relations, there are no permanent friends or foes, only permanent national interests, points out Dr Rup Narayan Das.
Chess icon Viswanathan Anand feels the current crop of Indian players, that he has had a role in shaping, has turned out to be "great" in grabbing crucial opportunities.
It seems that the West is sending a signal to India that it can return to old hostilities unless India toes their line on Russia. It is no surprise that India is being compared with Putin's Russia in terms of targeting 'dissidents' as the West calls these Khalistani terrorists, asserts Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
V Gangadhar, veteran journalist and well-known satirist, passed away in Pune on Monday night. He was 85.
India should encourage the second coming of SAARC with climate change as an urgent agenda and keeping Indian security concerns in mind as the subtext, suggest Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd) and Colonel Anil Athale (retd).
Keeping surplus money in a bank account has become perilous, alerts Harsh Roongta.
'The struggle of insurgents and pro-independence political activists is fuelled by a deep conviction that not only is a free Balochistan possible, but they also believe that Pakistan will inevitably break apart, leading to Balochistan's independence.'
The US is looking very carefully at what Modi did when he was in Moscow, a senior State Department official has told lawmakers concerned over the growing India-Russia ties.
Global consumer preferences can be influenced through music, films, literature, yoga and sports because they create interest and a sense of familiarity that can help our businesses to access foreign markets, suggests T N C Rajagopalan.
A procession of barges will take nearly 7,000 athletes along the river past Paris's most famous landmarks, while more than 300,000 spectators will watch from the banks.
Russia's unprecedented rapprochement with North Korea has raised concerns about the re-emergence of a Russia-China-North Korea alliance which could increase the probability of conflict on the Korean Peninsula, explains Dr Rajaram Panda.
A host of conspiracy theories followed, involving Indira Gandhi, her younger son Sanjay, his favourite small car project, secret funding of the Bangladesh Mukti Bahini and even the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.
Images from the Euro 2024 Group F matches between Georgia and Portugal; Czechia and Turkey in Germany on Wednesday.
The scaling up of the India-US strategic partnership to the level of non-NATO ally with defence deals, sharing and transfer of defence technology, interoperability, joint collaboration and joint production of defence equipment has exacerbated Moscow's anxiety, notes Rup Narayan Das.
Sports films have their own unique charm, but those centered on the Olympics and Olympians stand apart, depicting unparalleled tales of grit, guts, gumption, and glory.
Times have changed, situations have changed, but the basic nature of superpower geo-politics remains the same and so also India's diplomacy -- call it non-alignment, strategic autonomy or neutrality; it all depends on the time scale, notes Rup Narayan Das.
Russia continued as India's main arms supplier, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said.
Had it not been for the slow but sure emergence of China as a threat to the western order, would India have been accepted as a near-equal partner by individual western nations, jointly and severally, questions N Sathiya Moorthy.
Velammal Institutions is the catalysing force behind this chess revolution in Chennai
'We were not protesting for a wage hike or provident fund. We were protesting for the safety of the larger population. There is no personal gain.'
Ramoji Rao lived as the interface between business and politics and was an active participant in both for most of his remarkable life.
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