Below the line

Flyeasy, really?

Flyeasy, the yet-to-be-born airline from the south, is finding it difficult to take wing. Apparently, some of its top officials are already on their way out and one of them could not even make it to a crucial meeting because air tickets were not made available to him. Hotel bills, too, remain unpaid. Neither the airline’s website nor its Facebook page gives a clue as to when it will take off, though it does entreat viewers to keep checking when the launch will happen. But why would anyone want to do that? Fight of fancy?

A song and a smile

The 67th Republic Day finally brought some cheer for Mamata Banerjee, and perhaps also signals the West Bengal chief minister’s changing equations with the Centre. No, not that she got her much-sought-after debt waiver. But she did get to display the West Bengal tableau at the Republic Day parade — its first after the Narendra Modi government took over. The tableau depicted the bauls (wandering minstrels and bards) of Bengal. In 2015, the Centre had rejected the West Bengal government’s proposal to display the State-run Kanyashree project (for educating the girl child) as its tableau. This had led to a round of criticism of the Centre by Trinamool MPs and party spokespersons.

Smarter and smarter

Kochi made it to the first cut of 20 Smart Cities selected by the Centre and stands to get liberal funding for modernising infrastructure, public transportation, IT connectivity and e-governance systems. For real estate developers and ad copywriters, however, Kochi is already pretty smart, thanks to SmartCity Kochi (SCK), an IT business park that has been long in-the-making. The joint venture project of the Kerala government and TECOM Investments, whose parent company built SmartCity Dubai, has been hanging fire for over a decade now. The SCK, which was supposed to turn Kochi smart and an IT-ITES hub, was the most ambitious project in the city at the time. Smart real estate developers, riding the SCK hype, jacked up prices and sold apartments and villas miles away from the project at skyhigh prices. The delay has taken much sheen off the project, but ad copywriters still love to add the ‘smart’ flourish to Kochi.

Braving the cold

There are occasions when a dress code becomes more important than what is appropriate for a particular climate. Secretaries of the Government of India were invited last month to the Prime Minister’s residence at 7 Race Course Road. Despite the extremely low temperatures, it appears that all the top officials turned up without mufflers and hats for fear the Prime Minister would be offended.

Mouth-watch

Former I&B minister Manish Tiwari has been a ‘tough to handle’ person for the Congress. Party spokespersons had to refute Tiwari’s statement more than half-a-dozen times last year, the latest being his comment on the ‘coup’ which, according to the Congress, never happened. After placating his mentor, the former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, the Congress high command was looking for ways to tame Tiwari. His inclusion in the list of spokespersons is seen as a “punishment”. He will have to watch his mouth.

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