When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Rajeev Gandhi was prime minister. We've had a long family relationship with them. He asked me to fight an election, and I went ahead and did it. But I was not qualified as a politician, and I am not going back there again.
It's essential not to have an ideology, not to be a member of a political party. While the writer can have certain political views, he has to be careful not to have his hands tied.
I don't think one party has a bad vision over the other party. I have no doubts that every Indian and every Indian political leadership would like to see this country get to a much better level. We would all like to see inclusive growth.
I had been a radical, a left-wing politico, and meeting the Indian people made me realize that the politics of the left and the right were so much less important than the politics of the heart and the spirit.
A Bollywood hero, for most people, has been a Raj, a Rahul or a Prem... it's now a part of the psyche.
I never played politics, I was never a party girl, and I never slept with any of the producers.
An honest politician has no goodies to toss around. This limits his effectiveness profoundly, because political power in India is dispersed throughout a multi-tiered federal structure; a local official who has not been paid off can sometimes stop a billion-dollar project.
Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi are our star campaigners. Our party will fight under their leadership.
In Shahjahanpur, there was not much of a political fight. It was my family constituency and I knew all the voters and their problems and needs.
India's national elections are really an aggregate of thirty different state elections, each influenced by its own local considerations, regional political currents, and different patterns of political incumbency.