Syed Firdaus Ashraf covers national politics, and sometimes movies too -- a truly wide arc! You can e-mail the author at firdausa@rediff.co.in
'...in which our names are written with our phone numbers.'
Meghna Gulzar's Daayra delves into the uncomfortable territory between public anger, police power, and the rule of law, drawing inspiration from the 2019 Hyderabad rape-murder case and the subsequent police encounter.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented Russian President Vladimir Putin with a Russian translation of the Thirukkural, the classical Tamil work by poet-philosopher Thiruvalluvar, ahead of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi.
Ajay Devgn's lease of his Juhu bungalow to a commercial salon has ignited a dispute with his housing society, which is vehemently opposing the move citing the area's residential character and potential disruptions.
'The fundamental issue that I have raised, how come India's GDP in current prices went down from Rs 86 lakh crore down to Rs 80 lakh crore -- a staggering erasure of Rs 6 lakh crore. This disappearance of Rs 6 lakh crore has not been answered by anyone.'
'We desperately want India to send the army as the evacuation process needs to be escalated immediately.'
'The ethanol blended with petrol programme should not be halted or reconsidered.' 'India is not experiencing a structural sugar shortage, and the ethanol blending roadmap does not compete with food security or drive domestic price increases.'
'With factories starting early for the next season, fresh sugar will enter market 10-15 days earlier than usual, and sugar price are expected to remain affordable in near term.'
'The trigger for the flood was definitely natural, but the damage that it caused was human-made.'
'There needs to be a monitoring of glaciers in high altitude areas and one needs to check regularly how geological changes are taking place.' 'We can mitigate that by regular monitoring but unfortunately, hardly any monitoring is happening.' 'And without monitoring those higher altitudes of Himalayas, people are suffering.'
'This government is in the very bad habit of doing so again and again. It has done so many times.'
'The incumbent matters. It matters a lot. If a person sitting on top is good, then he can achieve a lot. And if he is bad, you see what can happen.'
'They want to sabotage the caste census and bury Muslim backward classes, Hindu backward classes, Sikh backward classes and Buddhist backward classes.'
'If elections are held with honesty you will see their defeat.'
'Chandrasekaran wanted a five-year extension, but the Tata Group has a policy of 65 years as the retirement age for its executive chairman.'
'The BJP has all the instruments with them and they do have a sense of purpose, so I don't think there will be a challenge.'
'They probably imagine any hue and cry in the event Sheikh Hasina is hanged will be shortlived as it happened when Bhutto was hanged in Pakistan in 1979.'
'But they had nothing to negotiate as the government did not negotiate. It is completely the fault of the government as they dumped it on the police.'
'This generation decides on their own what is good or bad for them.' 'They got an outlet to vent their anger against this government through CJP and they did that.' 'They felt how can the government control us or lathi charge us?'
'I went to protest because whatever is going on in our country is not right.'
