Inside track

Photo op missedThe media party at Katchal island noticed a striking shapely foreign beauty in black jeans and a T-shirt who along with som...

Photo op missed
The media party at Katchal island noticed a striking shapely foreign beauty in black jeans and a T-shirt who along with some friends was flying back from Port Blair to Calcutta. The foreign tourists had come by the commercial flight to witness the first sunrise of the new millennium, while the journalists had been brought on a plane chartered by the Tourism Ministry. The party of tourists had mistakenly boarded the airport bus for the journalists so they were asked to get off.

But seconds later at the Port Blair landing strip, the journalists saw Rahul Gandhi wearing Bermuda shorts, joining the foreign tourists. They realised belatedly that they had in fact been talking to Rahul8217;s elusive Colombian girlfriend. Several pressmen grabbed their cameras to take a shot, but a burly SPG guard protecting Rahul warned everyone not to take photos. Some newsmen argued that no law barred them from taking pictures of a public personality and his friends. 8220;If you click your camera I will breakit,8221; the SPG man growled. Intimidated by the threat, the newsmen decided discretion was the better part of valour in this remote part of the world.

Unsporting activity
Politicians plugging for their not-so-talented kin to don the national colours is unfortunately all too common. And one that partly explains India8217;s poor record in sports. The latest example is the case of Sidharth Verma, son of former Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma, who has been selected for the under-19 Delhi zone cricket team even though he has scored only 59 runs in eight innings. In contrast, a promising young batsman who averaged 150 runs per game was left out.

Rescue operation
Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar has gone places because of his pliancy in allowing the political leadership to walk all over the bureaucracy. Kumar was the Home Secretary in Uttar Pradesh when the Babri Masjid was demolished, but instead of getting a black mark on his career graph, he earned the eternal gratitude of the BJP. But thevery attributes which make him a perennial favourite with his political masters becomes a predicament whenever there is a real crisis and quick strategising and initiative is required from him side, since there is no one above him in babudom to counsel him.

Kumar, as the head of the high-powered committee on prices, had failed to act decisively when the onion prices spiraled out of control last year and allowed Minister of State for Agriculture Som Pal to dictate terms. In the recent IA hijack, Kumar was the head of the Crisis Management Group but thanks to delay and dithering all around the aircraft was allowed to fly off from Amritsar. After that it was largely Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Brajesh Mishra who took charge of the rescue operations.

Kumar8217;s friends in high places have now launched a protect-him-at-all-costs operation that he gets to retain his job. They blame everyone else for the hijack lapses, particularly the media for faithfullycategorising the government8217;s blunders. Thanks to Operation Rescue Kumar, there will be no inquiry committee; even though Jaswant Singh had earlier vowed that after the crisis was resolved there would be a minute-by-minute post-mortem to find out how things had gone wrong at the Amritsar end. But in the process of successfully bailing himself out, Kumar may have lost a powerful friend, Brajesh Mishra, who is understandably miffed that Kumar has been not-so-subtly trying to shift the blame to him, by informing all and sundry that since Mishra was older to him and senior to him he naturally expected him to take the lead.

Home truths
Unlike his predecessor B.P. Singh, Home Secretary Kamal Pandey keeps journalists at a distance and has also plugged leaks to the media from the Ministry. An additional secretary, P.D. Shenoy is entrusted with the task of handling the media. With such a senior officer in charge of the media, deputy secretaries and under secretaries feel too intimidated to speak frankly topressmen when they come calling in the hope of getting exclusive stories. Thus most unofficial news from the Home Ministry has dried up.

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Shenoy meets the press daily between 5pm and 6pm, and offers tea and biscuits but imparts very little by way of hard news. For instance, his press statement on Central aid to the North East was merely an update of 1998 bulletin. His information on the PWG was a rehash of a 1977 briefing. During the plane hijack, the Home Ministry seemed the least informed about what was going on.

So successful has been Pandey8217;s method of keeping the media quiet that the Finance Ministry is thinking of emulating his example.