Hardly a week passes without environment minister Jairam Ramesh making headlines. And so it has been in the last few days as well,when his remarks on the IITs and IIMs have become the subject of a raging debate. In contrast to the last few days,the previous week had passed off rather peacefully for Jairam after he had returned from a visit to Finland. His only public interaction of the week,on Tuesday,had been cancelled. On Wednesday last week,he had attended a meeting of the World Bank and later hosted the ambassador of Denmark in his office. On Thursday,Jairam attended the meeting of the Union Cabinet in the morning. In the afternoon,he went to the Hyatt Regency hotel to interact with a visiting delegation from a university in the US. The newly-elected chief minister of Kerala,Oommen Chandy,came calling on him on Friday morning. On that day,he also attended a video conference in the Planning Commission with the district officials of the areas affected with left-wing extremism. The Planning Commission holds such video conferences routinely to monitor the various centrally sponsored schemes being implemented in these areas. Later in the afternoon,Jairam participated in a meeting of the forest department in his ministry. There were no official engagements for him on the weekend. But he started the current week with a bang on Monday morning with his latest remarks,questioning the quality of faculty and research in not just the IITs and IIMs but all government scientific institutions. Jairam made these remarks on the sidelines of a day-long stakeholders conference on the Convention of Biological Diversity,whose next meeting India is scheduled to host in October 2012. The minister spent his entire day at the conference,personally moderating the discussions for the most part,even as his comments of the morning started being debated publicly. The entire day on Tuesday was devoted to the elephants,with Jairam launching a global elephant conservation initiative named Haathi Mere Saathi. He attended both the morning and afternoon sessions of the conference and hosted a reception for ministers and delegates from other countries,mainly from Africa,who had come for the event. Later,on Tuesday night,he left for Bhopal by train. In Bhopal on Wednesday,he announced that the 350 tonnes of toxic waste lying at the defunct Union Carbide factory would be handled by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) at its facility meant for such purposes. He also talked about the Centres plans to demolish the Union Carbide factory to deal with mercury contamination. The minister was scheduled to return from Bhopal by Wednesday night. amitabh.sinha@expressindia.com
