By IANS,
New Delhi : With the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government having completed 100 days in office that many see as a mixed bag high on intent but not so high on delivery, attention is focussed on a possible cabinet reshuffle as well as a revamp of the All India Congress Committee.
Grapevine has it that Salman Khurshid, the minority affairs minister, and a sulking Srikant Jena, who initially refused to take charge as minister of chemicals and fertilizers, are likely to be upgraded.
Changes are afoot even in the Congress party with the “high command” – read 10, Janpath – hoping to usher in the one-man one-post principle. Ghulam Nabi Azad, Veerappa Moily, A.K. Antony, Prithviraj Chavan, who are all currently ministers in the union cabinet, may be divested of the state units they are in charge of.
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‘More money doesn’t mean military strength’
Pranab Mukherjee may now be in charge of the finance ministry but his versatility and his experience keep him in touch with practically every aspect of governance. At a luncheon interaction with editors, Mukherjee was asked if allocating only 2.2 percent of GDP for defence did not make a handicap for India compared to Pakistan that spent 3.4 percent of its GDP on defence.
Mukherjee, who has been defence minister and then foreign minister in the previous Manmohan Singh government, promptly replied that military spending was not necessarily an index of the country’s defence preparedness. He said India had taken a conscious decision not to up its defence spending and even if Pakistan spent five percent of its GDP on defence, it did not make that country any more secure.
“Our forces are well prepared to meet any eventuality,” Mukherjee assured.
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No need to eat less, Pranab counters Lalu
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee could not help taking a dig at his former cabinet colleague Lalu Prasad over a comment on drought. The latter had said one way to counter drought would be to eat and drink less, even skipping one meal a day.
During a meeting with industrialists, Mukherjee gave his usual update on drought and said India had enough stock for over a year to counter its ill effects. But his subsequent comment, with that little smirk, is what left the audience in splits.
“Let me assure all of you there is certainly no need to eat less or drink less as someone has suggested,” he said, with a clear allusion to Lalu.
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Smile, women MPs tell serious Sandeep
At a panel discussion on the Women’s Reservation Bill, east Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit had to brave a face-off with veterans like Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Brinda Karat and Congress leader from Jharkhand Mabel Rabello.
As the debate took a serious turn, women MPs were keen to know the obstacles posed by male MPs for the passage of the bill – that has been pending for years in parliament – and if it would be ever given a fair chance to become law. The two women Rajya Sabha MPs took friendly jibes at Dikshit.
“Smile Sandeep!” cried Karat with a laugh, while Demello took hold of his shoulders and shook him saying, “There, I am shaking him, may be he’ll smile.”
Dikshit finally broke his silence and said the bill would only work if another delimitation exercise was undertaken to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats to 725 from the current 545.
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Creamy posts for dark horses
Ask the country’s first woman Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar how she made it to the presiding officer’s post, when so many other names were being bandied around, and she has a simple answer.
“In politics there is a rule, people whose names come up first for any post never make it and it is always people who do not figure anywhere (who) get the post.”
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Minister’s prescription – turn off answering machines
Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi had some home truths to tell the over 120 members of the elite Indian Foreign Service who had gathered for a powwow of heads of missions last week.
In his speech, Ravi made a strong pitch for turning Indian missions into welcoming institutions, so as to get rid of the widespread perception of poor accessibility, lack of courtesy and the absence of a helpful approach, especially in many of the newly started missions. His formula was simple – turn off the answering machines.
Knowing fully well that answering machines are impersonal and commonplace in most missions abroad, Ravi stressed the need for human interface to be more responsive to needs of NRIs and others wanting information and help from the country’s missions abroad.
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Overworked scribes, ask boss please!
Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni has begun a fortnightly media durbar where reporters can ask her anything and everything, but needless to say it’s her prerogative to answer. The last free-wheeling interaction held at the plush committee room next to her office in Shastri Bhavan stretched for over an hour and a half.
Nobody was expecting the interaction to last this long. The minister, however, patiently answered all questions with a dash of humour. When a scribe suggested that she use her office to enforce a five-day week for overworked journalists, Soni smiled, saying this was not the right time to raise such a demand in times of recession.
“Your bosses may not be pleased with the idea,” she said.
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What’s Mamata up to, wonders Congress
Some Congress party leaders are intrigued as to why Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee inducted former BJP strategist Sudheendra Kulkarni as a member of an expert panel set up by her ministry.
Although he was appointed to the panel earlier this month, the news broke only when Kulkarni quit the BJP and said he would remain a well-wisher of the party. This has left some Congress members wondering why the minister named a serving member of an opposition party to the panel.
“Does she know that he was also a one-time CPI-M card holder,” queried one, referring to the journalist-turned-speechwriter’s previous links with the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the main political adversary of Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
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A common ground between warring camps
The row between Reliance tycoons Mukesh and Anil Ambani has reached a point where the government has had to plead with them to end their fight for the good of the economy. Though the two are locked in a bitter dispute over a gas contract that has been hogging headlines, there is a commonality that bridges both camps.
Both Shankar Adwal, vice-president, corporate affairs, RIL, who is Mukesh Ambani’s pointsman, and A.N. Sethuraman, president, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, share a common lawyer. That’s because both top executives were charged with violation of the Official Secrets Act for receiving and possessing classified documents in a CBI case filed in 1998 – when the two warring sides were together – and the case carries on till date.
On this count at least they seem to find common ground.