Dressing down

Our High Commissioner in London, Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, hosted a tea party for the visiting Indian cricket team who were playing against England the next day. True, the invitation stated ‘informal dress’. All the same the prim and proper guests, including several diplomats, were taken aback by the scruffy appearance of the guests of honour. Our sportsmen turned up in T-shirts, wearing sneakers and some even sported a two-day-old stubble. It was expected that they would at least don their official blazers on such a formal occasion.

Scandal free term

After he took charge as prime minister for the second time, Manmohan Singh had an emotional get together with his entire staff, including peons and drivers. For most in the PMO, their soft spoken and kindly boss is their real hero. Singh thanked all those working for him for ensuring that there was no scandal in the PMO during his five years in office. This is something that few of his predecessors in office had been able to manage.

Write off Maharani

In the wake of the Congress media cell advisory urging former royalty not to use their titles, a retired IFS officer has written to the Ministry of External Affairs pointing out that the official website listing the resume of new Minister of State Praneet Kaur describes her as wife of the Maharaja of Patiala.

Change of heart

IB directors have for long tried to impress upon the West Bengal government the danger of the spread of Maoism, with little effect. When the Maoist threat to West Bengal was raised at the chief ministers conference in December last year, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya belittled the efforts of other states in tackling the problem. He felt that the Andhra government had simply pushed the Naxalites into the neighbouring states and Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh were following suit without solving the problem. Bhattacharya also mocked state governments for raising forces to fight Naxalites using animal names for the operations such as Greyhounds and Cobra.

... contd.