Below the line

The energetic, serious-looking JNUSU president Sai Balaji seldom betrays his witty side. But the other day, Balaji left media persons in fits of laughter. “Though the BJP promised to give us governments that are game changers, all they have managed to give so far are the governments that are name changers,” he said.

He was explaining how the BJP governments — both at the Centre and in Assam — have been betraying the interests of tea plantation workers by not implementing its promises of providing decent minimum daily wages to them. According to tea workers’ representatives, who were in the Capital to highlight the tea workers’ plight in Assam, the BJP had promised decent minmum wages in election campaigns since 2014.

If you thought you can flash your Aadhaar card as a proof of your identity for your insurance needs with the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), think again. No Aadhaar please, we are LIC, is how an LIC official recently put it to a policyholder. Crores of policyholders are now being strictly told that only passport copy, voter ID or any other government ID would be valid as KYC/proof of identity for their dealings with LIC. While policyholders may sob about this, spare a thought for LIC officials’ efforts for assiduously completing data entry of each Aadhaar Card and getting them linked to policyholders’ accounts, rued a LIC official. Should this be seen as ‘ease of doing business’ or the Supreme Court order effect? Maybe it just LIC’s way to ensure bettercustomer relationship management.

India’s push to ramp up renewable energy generation capacity has come in for praise. The Modi government can be credited for scaling up existing schemes. Speaking about the policy proposal for ramping up clean energy, former Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and now Director-General of the International Solar Alliance, Upendra Tripathy, said, “When the Prime Minister was reviewing the policy proposal for the scaling up of solar power projects, he asked why was the targeted capacity mentioned in Megawatt (MW) initially and then in Gigawatt (GW) in subsequent pages. As any normal bureaucrat would, I apologised and said that it is a mistake.” Now 1 GW = 1000 MW and writing in GW would save space while ensuring that the message is conveyed. But this was not the answer the PM was looking for. Pointing towards the heightened expectations, Tripathy said, “The Prime Minister told us that the shift from MW to GW while writing reflects the mindset shift which is being brought with the scaling up.”

Falling sick is a luxury. A look at room tariffs in Fortis is enough to put to shame the elite seven-star hotels in town. The rent of a Signature Apartment in Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon costs a whopping ₹2 lakh per day. A Presidential Suite costs ₹1.5 lakh a day and the Maharaja Suite costs a ₹1 lakh. For the less wealthy, there is a Signature Suite with a tariff of ₹50,000 a day and then four other options between ₹4,000-₹27,000 on sharing or individual basis. In a recent press conference, Fortis CEO Bhavdeep Singh defended the high costs by saying that if patients can afford it, they may as well get all the luxury they need!

Members of some of the home-buyers’ association were livid during a recent event organised by the Ministry of Housing and Affairs. It so happened, that one of the panel discussions exceeded the time limit and the moderator due to lack of time asked the invitees to give their suggestions later. So, when one of the association members got up to raise the concerns they are facing, the moderator asked him to sum it up quickly. To which the invitee in anger wondered why they were invited in the first place. Our Delhi Bureau

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