Koi Mil Gaya

India’s Chandrayaan-3 success and surrounding comments by the political top brass has triggered a meme-fest on social media. One of the most popular memes has been by a Chief Minister who, while referring to India’s previous space success, mistook astronaut Rakesh Sharma as Rakesh Roshan, the actor-turned-director.

The CM also missed the fact that Sharma had gone to space, and not landed on the moon.

Now the meme-fest surrounding the comments involve pictures of the CM congratulating Hrithik Roshan, Hrithik Roshan doing a happy dance, among others.

Also, what has also gone viral is an old clip from a movie where political workers are seen re-writing/re-telling the stories to corroborate the CM’s version of events.

Moonstruck

Most business leaders who attended the three-day B20 Summit India in Delhi — with participation by over 1,700 delegates from 55 countries — were so full of admiration for ISRO and Chandrayaan-3’s success that not a plenary meeting went by without mentioning about the mission. So much so that one B20 Task Force member (a space entrepreneur) even sang a song in praise of the achievement and virtually took all those assembled to Mars!

Anti-profiteering logjam

With Competition Commission of India (CCI) Member BS Bishnoi superannuating last Wednesday, the competition watchdog has become inquorate again.

Not only will this affect M&A approvals, but it could also have a ripple effect and come in the way of disposal of anti-profiteering cases by CCI, market observers rued.

Reason: CCI was entrusted with the mandate of erstwhile National Anti-profiteering Authority (NAA) from December last year and the perennial lack of quorum at CCI has now taken its toll on discharge of this mandate as well.

All eyes are now on the Prime Minister’s Office to see if the process of appointing new CCI members will take wing or not.

Until then industry representatives whose anti-profiteering cases are before CCI for adjudication can breathe easy!

Scarcity of flowers

As display of pookkalams (floral carpets) is an integral part of Onam, flower dealers have it good during the 10-day festival season. However, the scarcity of flowers forces many traders to depend on neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to meet the demand. Even the intervention of various government agencies, including cooperative societies, Kudumbasree and educational institutions by way of taking up floriculture has not yielded the desired results.

Traders either enter into contract farming of flowers in neighbouring regions or book the yield much before Onam.

The demand for flowers this season is expected to cross 100 tonnes as against 80 tonnes last year.

Flowers that are high in demand are chrysanthemum (jamandhi), rose, gomphrena or common globe amaranth, oleander, green Cyprus leaf.

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