Babus sweat and curse

 The babus across the country are cursing under their breath. Mohammad Zabeeh Afague, a Delhi resident has sought information under Right to Information that has given the entire country's bureaucracy some additional work. Afaque has sought 101 queries relating to status of Muslims in India that involves almost all central ministries, departments and their state counterparts. Sample his queries: how many Muslim women are hired in hospitals? How many FIRs have been filed
 against Muslims and how many Muslims have filed FIRs? The other questions that have been sent to relevant ministries and department include percentage of Muslims owning land, home, bank-loans and state-wise break-up of Muslims’ per capita income.  The response is likely to run into thousands of pages and more comprehensive than Sachar Committee report.

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 Losing interest in Vande Mataram?

 Is Vande mataram losing its sheen? Two years after it was made mandatory for Madhya Pradesh bureaucracy to sing Vande mataram in chorus on the first day of every month, more and more babus and ministers are giving it a skip.  The ruling BJP is red faced. May Day began with merely 200 persons showing up for the pious occasion when the state secretariat in Bhopal has over 5,000 employees. The chief minister was on a 24-hour fast against Centre so Shivraj Singh Chauhan excused himself. Taking a cue, dozens of ministers who were present in the state capital Bhopal ignored the event that was launched two years ago amid fanfare and euphoria. The employees who had expressed reservation over its continuation were mocked at. Now it’s their turn to point fingers.

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 More on Rashtrapathi Bhavan

 The literary success of former secretary to A.P.J. Kalam, P.M. Nair has motivated other bureaucrats too. A senior Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer who served under Giani Zail Singh is recollecting his thoughts to pen his memoirs.

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 Competitive spokesmen

 AICC spokesman Abhishek 'Manu' Singhvi has a challenger in Manish Tiwari. Tiwari who recently joined the AICC's battery of spokespersons is doing what Singhvi thought he was best in doing. The lawyer-cum columnist used to write regular columns in newspapers dwelling at lengths about issues of the day. Tiwari has also followed suit. At an informal level, Singhvi was 'Hindi face" of the Congress with colleague Jayanti Natarajan sticking to English. In this domain too,
 Tiwari is spreading wings. What is more is that Tiwari is dishing lot more info and gossips at his informal "off-the-record" briefings attracting many scribes. Singhvi needs to do something more to  retrieve lost ground.

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 Wonder, wonder--!

 Congressmen are still wondering how V. Narayanaswamy succeeded in becoming a minister. One explanation is how the Rajya Sabha MP went out of the way to speak on every issue in the upper house. On one occasion when Narayanaswamy rose to speak on a matter of foreign policy, Jairam Ramesh could not resist. He whispered to a colleague how he admired Narayanswamy's concern for foreign policy. The colleague responded pointing that after-all Narayanaswamy comes from
 Puducherry which is the last outpost of the country. Had course of history been different, Puducherry could have been "Republic of Puducherry."