Below the line

Wedded to tourism

Kerala is looking for new ways to market its tourism potential. Last week, a full-scale beach wedding was held at Pallathankulangara on Vypeen Island off Kochi. A Maharashtrian who works at Doha airport married a Qatar Airways airhostess from Kerala in a wedding that was styled partly European, partly Indian.

The package wedding, organised by event managers at a tourism resort, included fireworks. Beach weddings are popular in the West and Kerala’s tourism operators can be counted on to sell the concept to more and more wealthy young couples looking for innovative ideas.

Gold’s own country

The World Gold Council reports that in July-September, the demand for gold jewellery in India rose by 60 per cent to 183 tonnes, on a year-on-year basis over the same period last year. “Improved consumer confidence in both the domestic economy and the new government added to the positive sentiment,” the WGC notes. The biggest demand is said to be from Kerala, mostly from jewellery makers. The State is home to several gold jewellery firms with branches across the country as well as abroad, mostly in the Gulf.

Mr Modesty

At the annual all-India inter-school quiz organised by the Reserve Bank of India on Children’s Day, Governor Raghuram Rajan confessed to not knowing many of the answers relating to banking at the quiz. Rajan, who was chief guest at the brain-teasing finals of RBIQ 2014, said though he too had participated in many quiz contests, he was amazed at the knowledge young kids have today. He also said that even though information was available at the click of a mouse these days, “it is how you stitch the pieces together that’s gives you the winning edge”.

To err is er…

The vshow that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has a distinct distaste for answering queries on critical issues pertaining to her ministry. She is more at ease delivering impromptu public speeches. But the day she makes amends, Assembly reporters have their plates full, like the Assembly session on Children’s Day when she took the opportunity to introduce members to Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution to the economy. Her source of information, she said, was “Nehru’s Freedom at Midnight ”. As no one from the ruling party dared correct her, it took the Opposition to point out tha Freedom at Midnight was written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.

Sun tweets

Traditional manufacturing companies seem to have taken a cue from the Centre on using Twitter. Journalists were alerted by Sun Pharma to watch for live tweets from the company — sure enough there were tweets from the Chief Financial Officer on the company’s financial performance. Is the day of the official press release heading to its end?

SMAC on

What happens when an acronym gets jumbled? It can really be embarrassing as was pointed out recently by a bureaucrat. SMAC, an acronym for Social, Media, Analytic and Cloud, is the latest buzzword in the IT industry. However, if jumbled, it will become ‘scam’, which “we are used to anyway,” he said at a seminar.

T-budget, debt burden

Telangana has a per capita debt burden of about ₹29,000 thanks to the funds raised by the Andhra Pradesh government over the years. According to the debt sharing formula, Telangana gets a share of about 48 per cent of the debt with the rest apportioned to Andhra Pradesh.

Significantly, the new State budget which was presented during the ongoing session of the House does not mention the debt burden. The Opposition was quick to pounce, and demanded a White Paper on the State’s finances.

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