Skilling is a necessity irrespective of one’s profession. But the nature of skills varies across jobs. Elaborating on it, Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister for Skills and Entrepreneurship, said, “Politicians are considered the ones with least skills. But it is a skill to earn the applauses from an audience and that is something that I have become skilled at”.
Survival of the thickest
A senior Congress party leader was recently asked by women journalists as to how he survived the continuous barbs thrown at him by leaders from other political parties and whether it stressed him out. The charismatic young man smiled and shook his head. Pointing to his ears, he said that he let such words in from one ear and out from the other. When he was asked whether that was his survival mantra in Parliament, he chose to be silent. No winks here!
Of cows and votes
“Only thing that the cow is capable of giving is votes. So it is of value for only politicians. And to us, farmers, they only give headache and sleepless nights,” says Dilip Sachan, a 45-year-old farmer from Gaura village in Kanpur Nagar district.
Sachan, who owns three buffaloes, and a small patch of land where he grows jowar or bajra as summer crop and wheat in winter, says farmers like him are suffering heavy losses season after season because of stray cattle in and around the village. “There are nearly 100-odd stray cows in the village. Protecting our crops from them is next to impossible,” Sachan says.
Other farmers in the village too echo Sachan’s feelings. “Very few people in the village nowadays keep cows as it impossible to dispose of them after they stop yielding milk,” says Phool Singh. Only 10 per cent of the milk collected by us is cow milk, the rest is buffalo milk, says a representative for Amul, which has close to 1,300 village-based milk cooperative societies in central Uttar Pradesh districts.
Adhia Sir ki class: missing
Hasmukh Adhia, Finance Secretary, who is also holding charge of the Revenue Department, is the anchor man in implementing the Goods and Services Tax (GST). He was also the most sought-after person during the meeting and post-meeting press conference.
Earlier he used to sit next to the Finance Minister during press conferences. At the informal briefings after the press conferences, Adhia used to explain the various decisions to journalists.
However, things have changed now. Those who attended the 28th GST Council meeting said Adhia was not his usual self. Even in the post-meeting press conference, he was sitting in a row behind the Finance Minister and not next to him. He hardly spoke during the conference and as soon as the briefing was over, he left the venue without the customary ‘Adhia Sir ki class.’
Pizza time
Last week in a packed hall of close to 100 attendees, representatives of a pharmaceutical company, NITI Aayog officials and members of the press, a popular brand of pizza was served much to everyone’s delight. It is ironical that a government that prides itself on being “health-conscious” decided to serve pizzas at its press conference. So much for rolling out “Ayushman Bharat”, and health and wellness centres in the country.
Antigua pitch
No sooner had diamantaire Mehul Choksi, who is wanted in the ₹13,000-crore PNB scam, declared himself a “lawful citizen” of Antigua, than the corridors of power in the Capital were abuzz about the next move of PNB and the government. Imagination ran wild and a cricket-mad official came up with a wacky suggestion of seeking the help of legendary cricketer Sir Vivian Richards, who hails from Antigua for getting back Choksi. Will PNB now play a different stroke in the Choksi issue? Only time will tell.
Our Delhi Bureau