The Parliamentary Research Service has analysed the activity of this year's session. Its findings: This was the shortest Budget session in the last two decades. Around 81 per cent of budgetary demands for grants were not discussed in Parliament. Along with the Finance Bill, only 5 Bills were passed in this session (excluding Appropriation Bills). And only 6 per cent of the productive time in the Rajya Sabha and 12 per cent in the Lok Sabha were spent on legislation.

Third time lucky?

The Prime Minister of India has invited the Pakistan President and the Prime Minister to come to Mohali for the World Cup Cricket semi-final match between India and Pakistan. In 1987, Rajiv Gandhi had invited the then Pakistan's President, Zia ul-Haq. India lost that match. Then Dr Singh invited General Musharraf in 2005. India lost that one too. Will India be third time lucky?

He'd like to get younger!

Warren Buffett may be the world's third richest man but the one thing the octogenarian billionaire yearns for is his lost youth. When someone at a media briefing asked him if there was anything about his life he would like to change, pat came the reply: My age!

A ‘thinking day' will help

Enough has been said about how it is high time Indian companies innovated in order to compete with global powers. Agreed. But, as this gentlemen pointed out at a CII summit recently, with most of us working 60 hours a week doing routine work, where is the time to think? We need a whole day to think; that's how innovation happens, he said. Simple, but any takers?

Of power and power-point

Learning IT from a politician? Sounds unlikely, doesn't it. But Mr Noshir Kaka, Director, McKinsey did learn something. At a Nasscom Global Captive Summit, Mr Kaka recounted a meeting with the then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, 15 years ago. First, Mr Kaka was shocked to get an appointment at 4.30 a.m. Then, as his team arrived at the Chief Minister's official residence with an overhead projector and slides, Mr Naidu drew out his laptop and asked, “Don't you guys have a power-point?

Can't miss the bat

In this season of the cricket World Cup, you can find attendants in Chennai's star hotels wielding bats of a different kind. Shaped like a tennis racquet, these “mosquito bats” are found to be more effective than spray as they electrocute the pesky insects. You can spot attendants circling all over the hotel lobby and restaurants with the bats, chasing mosquitoes to kill. Next time you visit a restaurant in one of these hotels and hear an annoying sound, remember that it is just one more mosquito electrocuted with a “mosquito bat”!