Tough decision

Both RAW and IB have warned the government on the basis of intercepts from terrorist camps of a major strike on the coming Republic Day in Delhi. The Republic Day parade attended by some 600 VIPs provides an easy target and an operation to sanitise the entire Rajpath stretch with so many people present is hazardous. A policy decision on whether to scale down the traditional parade this year or even dispense with the 50-year-old tradition is yet to be taken. Meanwhile, preparations for the parade are going on.Strange omission

Eighteen months after the National Population Commission (NPC) was formed with much fanfare, another meeting was finally held, albeit a rather truncated one. Most of the NPC members were missing but the Planning Commission representatives were present in strength since the vice chairman of the NPC is none other than K C Pant. The most notable absentee was the Health and Family Welfare Minister C P Thakur, though he heads the nodal ministry for implementing the national population policy. Ministers from other social sectors such as Ananth Kumar, Jual Oram and Murli Manohar Joshi showed up.

The CD-Rom presentation of demographic studies was a near repeat of the slide data show presented 18 months back. Someone forgot to scan the visuals before making the CD-Rom and the lettering was indecipherable. A senior doctor remarked caustically, ‘‘arey bhai is the CD also from Bihar?’’ If there was little progress to report at the conference it was because the promised fund for population stabilisation has yet to materialise and the key nodal ministry did not make any presentation.

Bureaucrat’s MAFA

Chief secretaries from southern states waxed eloquent that the Centre was not taking adequate measures to protect defence installations in their respective states at a home ministry conference on national security. The Tamil Nadu chief secretary referred to the vulnerability of the Kalpakkam nuclear installation in Tamil Nadu, while the Andhra Pradesh chief secretary pointed out that in case of an aerial attack on his state it would take an hour and a half for air defence to be rushed from Pune.

Cabinet Secretary T R Prasad revealed a dry sense of humour. Referring to the long winded speeches by senior bureaucrats about security matters, he observed that if the acronym TINA (there is no alternative) was applicable to politicians, bureaucrats suffered from a MAFA factor. His remark that MAFA stood for ‘‘mistaking articulation for action’’ left the audience in splits.

Divided loyalties

The drill in the Foreign Office is that when the prime ministers takes a call from another head of government the joint secretary in the ministry dealing with the concerned country is at hand to take notes. Thanks to the Afghanistan crisis, Atal Behari Vajpayee has been exchanging notes with several world leaders including, George Bush, Tony Blair, Vladmir Putin and Pervez Musharraf. But the joint secretary from the MEA has not been called of late during the telephonic talks, instead it is the JS from the PMO P.S. Raghavan who makes the minutes.True, Raghavan is also from the Foreign Office, but perhaps his first loyalty lies more with the principal secretary to the PM, Brajesh Mishra rather than Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh.

Communication gap

Harish Awasthi, known for his professionalism has been brought in as director general (news) for both TV and AIR by the Prasar Bharati CEO Anil Baijal. But the Additional Director General Deepak Sandhu who belongs to the Indian Information Service has got accustomed to calling the shots in DD and refuses to vacate her office at DD’s Siri Fort complex for the new boss. It is not just a case of a mere room but also the office where the real symbols of powers such as the RAX telephone are located. Sandhu’s arrogance stems from her proximity to the former I and B additional secretary Rajiv Ratan Shah and through him Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan. The dynamic Sushma Swaraj has not protested so far against the remote control interference in her ministry.

Blame game

The Special Secretary (Home) S P Mohapatra may be still inquiring into the imaginary IA hijack, but behind the scenes the blame game is already on. Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Khan who unnecessarily woke up the prime minister in the middle of the night points a finger at the Crisis Management Group. Members of the CMG claim privately that since the PM had asked Home Minister L K Advani to attend, they presumed the minister would take the initiative. Since the bureaucrats and politicians are obviously not going to take the rap, the easy way out was to make the captain the fall guy. But with the powerful pilot’s union backing their man, that leaves the chief air hostess as the most vulnerable target.

The air hostess was asked by the pilot to look out for suspicious passengers. She pinpointed the potential hijacker on the basis of a passenger opening his brief case to put in a calendar which he had been carrying in his hand, asking for a blanket and insisting on using the front toilet!

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