Emotions may have been running high in Hyderabad after news broke about Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s chopper going missing, but just like every such crisis, nerves were not in order in the Centre for the first 10 hours. Media managers took cover as the electronic media endlessly speculated on half-baked information about the late CM having made an emergency landing, that he was safe or even to the extent that he was incommunicado because his security personnel were moving through Naxal areas. There was no guiding word from within the government as popular emotions rose and fell. And then came the icing, when DGCA Naseem Zaidi is believed to have confirmed that the CM was indeed safe and was traveling by road to his constituency. He had relied on his junior who had spoken to another aviation official in Hyderabad, who had simply rattled the speculation being made on television. His word went out as a confirmation, creating even more chaos. With high-profile media managers of the government literally missing in action, it was left to Home Minister P Chidambaram to personally intervene and take the Civil Aviation Ministry to task. He later spoke to the media to provide an accurate picture while others simply ducked.

100 days, what’s that?

AS the first 100 days of UPA-II draw to a close, this small but important milestone set by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself is becoming difficult to handle for even his advisors, leave aside the non-performing ministers who never bothered to draw up an agenda. There is a subtle, yet clear, retraction from the PM’s media managers over the past couple of weeks, trying to downplay the 100-day

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