Gujarat’s new chief secretary Gangaram Aloria’s simplicity and unassuming nature resonate through the corridors of power in Gandhinagar. Recently, he celebrated his son Deepak’s wedding to Kavitha, the daughter of Hanuman Prasad, a police constable in Rajasthan. Prasad and Aloria go back a long way — to the same village, Goner, in Jaipur district.
The story goes that Aloria lived in a mud hut there and cycled 16 km daily to school. He and Hanuman have been friends since then and, despite Aloria’s rise, their friendship has continued. The marriage function held in the Pink City on June 12 was attended by a large number of bureaucrats, officials and others.
IT outsourcing companies seem to have developed a penchant for detective names. IBM came up with Watson — a solution named after founder Thomas Watson but also the name of Sherlock Holmes’ assistant. Wipro has called one of its new solutions, Holmes. Is Poirot next on the cards?
Lights and shadows
National research professor, Goverdhan Mehta, highlighted the Indian panorama of ‘lights and shadows’ at the convocation of Mangalore University recently. He said India ranks high on the list of billionaires but 136th in the human development index. The country is projected to have the largest English-speaking population in the world, but it is also home to a majority of the world’s illiterates. It has 970 million cell phone users, but only a fraction of them have access to safe drinking water and sanitation. According to him, this panorama of ‘lights and shadows’ is unique and paradoxical. It reflects the country’s formidable strengths and vulnerable underbelly.
Sleepless in Kochi?
Kochi goes to bed by 9 pm. It’s a downer for the new-gen — professionals, tourists and revellers. But the city’s municipal corporation and the Kerala Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce plan to change all this. Three months from now, their NightLife Project will keep a section of the city awake until past midnight. A nightlife zone has been earmarked where shops, restaurants, and entertainment businesses will remain open till 1 am. Areas around Broadway, the main shopping region, and Marine Drive will be spruced up and amenities added; wayside eateries too will abound. Yet another city that will not sleep?
Relations at a nadir
Explaining how relations with Telangana deteriorated after bifurcation, Andhra Pradesh Labour Minister K Atchan Naidu said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s application to construct his house in Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad was yet to be cleared. He said the commissioner of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation was holding up the application, and accused him of behaving like a Telangana Rastra Samithi activist and not a senior IAS officer.
Sit in, stay in
Employees of a back office operation of a Singapore-headquartered company based out of Bengaluru went on a flash dharna after the management failed to pay their salaries this month. Instead of making a to-do outside the office, they stayed put inside for three days, sleeping on desks and using the cafeteria to prepare dinner. Following this novel protest, salaries were released, but not everyone got their dues. Now the employees are planning another protest. What will it be this time?
Cashing out on yoga
Online cab aggregator Ola offered its customers a free yoga session and free rides on International Yoga Day. All that customers had to do was enter a contest: the winners were given a free ride to a yoga training school for a session. This, Ola said, would help make customers “a better you”. The number of freebies and discounts some operators offer makes you wonder if their taxis run on air.