Beating the street

You can’t beat the country’s commercial capital when it comes to linking just about everything to the Sensex. A few days before counting day, a senior banker with a leading private sector bank said the stock market expected the NDA’s tally to equal the Sensex divided by 100. He didn’t have a rationale for this, but this is what the market expected, he said. As it happened, the NDA’s tally — which probably surprised the NDA itself — exceeded his calculation. Call it beating the street expectations!

Garvi Gujarat

This state has sent them all: prime ministers, deputy prime ministers and even an interim prime minister. Narendra Modi follows Morarji Desai as prime minister; Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and LK Advani were deputy prime ministers; and Gulzarilal Nanda served twice as interim prime minister whenincumbents Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri passed away. Although Nanda was born in Sialkot (part of Punjab in pre-Independence India, now in Pakistan), he won the Lok Sabha election from Sabarkantha, Gujarat, in 1962. What’s more interesting is that he was awarded India’s highest civilian honour the Bharat Ratna in 1997; Patel and Desai too had been similarly honoured earlier. If that’s not reason for Gujarati pride, what is?

Arrivederci Roma? Or not?

The national carrier Air India quite often manages to fly into turbulence. For some months now, the airline has been planning a daily flight from Delhi to Rome and Milan, and announced it just before the last leg of voting.

But with such proposals invariably carrying political connotations, it remains to be seen what will happen given that the Congress Party has been decimated in the Lok Sabha. More turbulence perhaps.

Two turning points

Every election has a turning point, or so conventional wisdom goes. This one had two, according to pundits, when the BJP’s two main competitors shot themselves in the foot: when Rahul Gandhi gave that awful television interview which made him look shallow and insubstantial, and when Arvind Kejriwal behaved like a protest leader after becoming chief minister of Delhi and resigned in a huff thinking it would be perceived by the people as a great sacrifice.

Image makeover?

Even as actor Salman Khan could be facing a jail term in connection with running over some pavement dwellers 12 years ago, his ‘Being Human’ social initiative is going places.

The brand has already crossed a sales turnover of ₹100 crore and plans to have its own e-commerce venture targeting sales to the tune of ₹225 crore by 2015.

Considering that there are a host of other court cases pending against the actor, Being Human helps portray a different image of this Khan. Is that what he is counting on?

Bouncers galore

After exit and post-poll surveys indicated the UPA government’s exit, Finance Minister P Chidambaram decided to duck a scheduled press conference called to review public sector banks. Though the minister had addressed the media on a number of occasions during the one-and-a-half months of polling, this time he left the venue as soon as the meeting got over. At the same time, security personnel and bouncers stopped media persons from approaching bank chairmen after the meeting, leaving everybody guessing as to who called in these guards — the Finance Ministry or the SBI’s local office?

Tailpiece

A senior political leader on the wide media coverage given to the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate: “Is it media or modia?”

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