Below the line

Clouded over

The recently concluded Paryatan Parv was quite an eye-catching extravaganza with dances, food and merchandise from across the country. However, at its grand finale on October 25, a smoke machine went off when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was giving a speech. Needless to say, it left the organisers scrambling to try and switch it off even as the minister continued to speak.

Missing minister

Arun Jaitley and his team of top officials unveiled the big-ticket decisions by the Union Cabinet for bank recapitalisation and the BharatMala project. However, Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari was conspicuous by his absence at the press conference that went on for over an hour-and-a-half. Gadkari met reporters on the next day to outline the projects cleared by the Cabinet.

Tired? Not tired?

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited India on Wednesday after touring Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Welcoming him to India in Hindi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that while it would have been tiring to visit six countries in five days, Tillerson was relaxed after reaching India because New Delhi was Washington’s closest friend. She also said that instead of feeling tired, Tillerson was feeling rather more energetic coming to India. However, Tillerson remained perplexed as he was unable to fathom exactly what Sushma Swaraj was saying through the interpreter.

Misunderstood n-power

Nuclear power has been the subject of much debate and fear since its creation. This is something that Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Department of Space and Atomic Energy Jitendra Singh is worried about. Speaking at the ninth nuclear energy conclave, Singh said that most people still believe that the department or nuclear energy focuses its energies on building a bomb to nuke Pakistan. He said that people need to be made aware of the other uses of nuclear energy that his department is working on.

Publicly confidential

The functioning of public sector undertakings has always been a fascinating operation. Earlier this year, government-run oil companies were asked to set up funds to support startups. Each PSU then set out to define its own startup policy, largely to set the rules of engagement between the PSU and the startups. One such policy was floated by GAIL (India) Limited and was called GAIL Pankh.

While the policy was in consonance with the policy of other PSUs, copies of it that were distributed at a public function recently were marked ‘confidential’. It is standard practise among government organisations to keep policies under wraps before they’re finalised. So how confidential is GAIL Pankh’s policy?

Modi calling

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a social media sensation since his debut on Twitter, back in 2009. His stellar social media presence is considered to be one of the factors that added to his immense popularity. But the PM’s presence is not limited to social media through just posts, likes and tweets. A supposedly ‘private conversation’ in Gujarati between Modi and a Bhartiya Janata Party worker in Gujarat has recently caught the fancy of social media observers. The audio clipping of the same had been circulating on WhatsApp and was then picked up by Twitter and Facebook.

The conversation weaves the Gujarat dream just before the elections and has been hailed by BJP social media volunteers as a reflection of how well connected the PM is with his brethren in the state. It was unclear how or why the worker was recording his conversation with the PM.

It is also strange how this four-minute chat has ended up everywhere possible just before the State elections.

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