A journalist today cannot live without the electronic voice recorder, and other gadgets. While it helps catch everything someone says, it also helps the reporter ensure that he has proof of what he has written when anyone accuses him/her of misquoting the speaker.

Recording what someone says is today taken as de rigueur. Very often, the moment someone ‘important’ begins to speak in public many a reporter today pulls out the recorder from his/her bag/pocket. The action has to be very quick, lest the speaker may fall silent. Many a reporter has today specialised in the art of pulling out the voice recorder from their pockets and bags.

Some of our own ilk prefer to record surreptitiously too. Though, most consider it ethical to record after taking the permission of the person whose words are being recorded.

A fellow journalist recently met the head honcho of a US-based company. The moment he caught up with him and greeted him, he thought he had to catch every word the man spoke. So he pulled out his voice recorder so rapidly from his pocket and took it near his face so fast that the American was taken aback, and nearly fell on his back. He also broke into cold sweat.

The journalist said with a sheepish smile, “Sir, this is India. Not US. We don’t walk around with a revolver in our pocket.”

It’s very easy to set up. It gets you moving. It has hundreds of moves available.

What is it?

It’s a game – a console game that I play on my Nintendo Wii. Your shape is a game featuring Jenny McCarthy (famous from Weight Watchers) containing nearly 400 exercise routines. Launched late last year, Your Shape comes with a Ubisoft (the game developers) camera that you mount on top of a TV, very similar to a webcam. After feeding in my details like age, gender, height and weight, the camera scans my body in two different positions.

What happens next is the part that I love. Within the TV screen is a picture-in-picture projection of my living room (or something that resembles my apartment) that helps serve as a mirror so I can watch myself exercise. I have to make sure that I stand closer to the camera, of course. Beside me, McCarthy’s anatomically perfect body moves as fluidly as any live trainer. She can sense when my body movements aren’t in sync with hers, and she quickly offers tutorials to teach me.

While I have the freedom to set my goal for the game - such as weight loss, and thereby get the recommended workouts, time for workouts, and how many days a week to do them, what I don’t like is McCarthy’s digital avatar correcting me to “refocus on the hands” or worse chides me by saying “you are doing it wrong” when I am honestly sweating and puffing from all that physical trauma. There are many of the cardio and warm up exercises that will kill your shoulders , but McCarthy demands you do perfectly else she will fail you at the end of the game!

Before I launch the exercise routine, I am required to tell McCarthy (my trainer) how motivated I am feeling at the beginning of each workout, and this determines how challenging the workout will be. My answer is usually “Tired” or “Sleepy” yet I am yet to end a routine on a high note. I have already abandoned the exercise routine thrice out of the total 4 attempts.

Sometimes McCarthy’s digitally manufactured voice can be very jarring. Like when her anatomical avatar on my TV screen tells me that to “straighten my back and bend more,” I find myself glaring at the TV and mouthing words that I can’t really write here.

I have to admit that this exercise programme must be working because it really makes me break into a sweat whenever I hear McCarthy telling me to “straighten up.” In fact, a 15 minute workout with this digital exercise routine burns about 200 calories, or so I am told. Bottomline: if you don’t want to watch yourself work out and escape McCarthy’s reproachful voice then you may want to head to a gym nearby but if you love the idea of getting rid of the Wii controller (like in the Tennis games), then Your Shape is can get you that perfect shape (provided you please the digital trainer!).

Passionate sports fans have never known to be the sanest of the people. They travel miles across the world to watch their favourite team or player. They will compromise on sleep, personal and professional relationships do all sorts of crazy things to watch sport and still believe they are rational and objective lot. And they are extremely superstitious. Fans have bizarre set of pre-match rituals, like not wearing a particular colour or not having a particular meal.

Like in my case there are certain things I try my best to avoid when Manchester United are playing. For instance, I never wear black on match days or always keep the phone on the right hand side or sit on the floor and watch the game if it’s not going United’s way. I even make my wife do silly things when she probably has a lot of other important stuff to attend to.

Similarly a friend of mine never watches the match in white light and insists on sitting in a particular spot for the entire 90 minutes. I remember in our hostel certain people were barred from entering the TV room as whenever they entered, something bad would happen in the cricket match. It’s actually quite ridiculous to believe that such actions will alter a course of the match but there are certain things which you can’t argue against and superstitions are one of them.

Forget fans, even athletes have their own set of silly superstitions. Tiger Woods insists on wearing only a red t-shirt on Sundays, the last day of a tournament as it brings good luck to him. Football players start growing their hair or don’t change their underpants if they are a part of a successful winning run. In the 1998 World Cup, France captain Laurent Blanc used to kiss the bald head of goalkeeper Fabien Barthez before every match in order to bring good luck. And that worked as France won the World Cup! Heck even Michael Jordan – the greatest of all time – used to wear a particular pair of shorts under his Chicago Bulls’ shorts.

The Boston Red Sox believed that the “Curse of the Bambino” was the reason for them not winning a Major League title for 86 years. This how that story goes: the then Red Sox owner Harry Frazee decided to trade a player called George Hernan Ruth to New York Yankees and while the Yankees went on to win an astonishing 26 titles, the Red Sox didn’t win a single one till 2004. George Hernan had two other nicknames. The first was “The Babe” and the second was “The Bambino”. Boston fans always believed that Frazee’s decision had cursed them for life and when they won the title in 2004, “the curse of Bambino” was finally lifted!

It’s probably got nothing to do with these beliefs and there will be occasions when your superstitions won’t work. Yet we like to cling to these as if our life depended on it. There’s a streak of insanity in all sports fans but for their team’s good we have a method in the madness!

At the recent Republic Day parade, I saw with pride – and with a sense of embarrassment – how local Delhiites cheered the Maharashtrian ‘Dabbewala’ tableau. Embarrassment because here was a crowd that celebrated the unity of the nation in cheering their Maharashtrian compatriots, while certain factions of that state are trying to alienate north Indians.

Indeed, Mumbai’s parochial politics that extend the Marathi Manoos agenda in Maharashtra have reached incomparable depths. It’s just another instance of petty-minded politicians going in for vote-bank politics, allowing it to rule over the republic.

For too long, even common people not touched by the agitation had been exposed to some of its linguistic effects. The anti-north Indian strategy by the self-styled custodians of culture in Maharashtra had spawned a new description of the typical migrant from north India: “Bhaiya”. The result: The word is almost a gaali now in Mumbai, the preferred alternative being just “Bhai”.

Then there’s the coining of the word “Dadargiri”. A Mumbai tabloid had even splashed this word on its front page while reporting clashes in the city’s Dadar area between cadres from the Shiv Sena and the MNS that had become very frequent in the immediate aftermath of the latter’s formation. For those who do not know, Dadar is where the headquarters of the Shiv Sena is located, and where MNS founder Raj Thackeray resides.

For most Indian citizens (not ‘non-Maharashtrians’ or ‘outsiders’), this entire Marathi maelstrom acts as yet another reminder of the one shameful aspect that has tarnished Mumbai’s international reputation all too often — a handful of people setting their own criteria for earning bread in Maximum City.

When was the last time there was such a problem in Delhi? I can never ever recall anyone in Delhi ever forcing me to learn Punjabi or some other north Indian language to work in the National Capital.

Funny thing is I do not believe the Marathi language criteria – if it’s just that – will work for the Mumbai politicians who want to keep ‘outsiders’ out. I say this from personal experience. When I landed in Maharashtra from Delhi, my parents forced me to pick up the local language in school (my first choice was French, which was available then, along with such other languages as Sanskrit and Urdu). However, I was pleasantly surprised by the easy-to-understand nature of Marathi, especially its Devnagari script.

Today, I understand Marathi extremely well but never ever use it as I honestly don’t want to murder the language, if you get my drift… But Marathi IS very easy to learn. If I could understand it within a few years just from school and not outside, I fully expect any determined Abu Azmi or a north Indian taxi driver to become fluent in Marathi.

Even the politicians know Marathi is easy!

On Monday, Raj Thackeray changed everything. In what can only be termed as a tacit understanding of how easy Marathi is and how it cannot be a fail-safe barrier to ‘outsiders’, he stated: “Just because one can write, read and speak Marathi does not entitle him to local jobs. For getting jobs in Mumbai, one has to be a Marathi by birth.”

This statement was in the making for quite some time. If not by MNS, then by the Shiv Sena for sure. After all, what do you get if all authorities choose to appease near-separatist (there’s just no other term) politicians’ ranting against people from the rest of India? Such a sick situation is especially guaranteed if there’s an ongoing competition between two political parties.

Till now, just pointing out your nationality was enough to stop a marauding right-wing Maharashtrian. Let me illustrate this with something that happened to a friend of mine.

He was working with a leading telecom company in an interior town of Maharashtra. A local customer came in one day with some issue and started conversing in Marathi. My pal was in the same boat as me in terms of linguistic skills — ‘me understand Marathi, but me no speak’!

For five minutes, the conversation carried on in chaste Marathi by the customer and in Hindi by my friend. Then the customer screamed, in Marathi: “You are in Maharashtra. Speak in Marathi!” In the wink of an eye, my pal retorted: “I am a Hindustani in Hindustan. I will speak in Hindi.” The customer threw his head back and exclaimed a long drawn “Arre yaar”, and resumed his business — in Hindi!

But that was many years ago. With Raj Thackeray’s latest outburst, no right-wing Maharashtrian is going to change his stance now.

Contrast this with what Delhi shopkeepers have achieved over the years. At most major markets in the National Capital, they don’t just recognise their customers’ languages, they actually follow the conversation and intersect — ‘innocently’ — their marketing skills. This comes from assimilation, not loss of culture.

Why can’t all people, especially those in and on the fringes of power, allow for more assimilation? The right-wing elements in Maharashtra say they are only looking out for their own community. That their ‘sons-of-the-soil’ agenda is for furthering the Marathi  Manoos cause. Now who’s against that if it’s done in the proper and, more importantly, legal manner. Why not just educate and equip all Maharashtrians with the right skills for jobs? Why not stop the rapid spread of slums that has skewed Mumbai’s population in such a manner that 60 per cent have become slum-dwellers? Why not remember eternally that Maharashtra is in India and is not, repeat, not some other country? Then at least politicians could stop talking in terms of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’.

Even otherwise, what escapes me is the logic of keeping non-Maharashtrians out of Mumbai when a majority of Mumbaikars are not even Maharashtrians. Although no one in their right mind would allow such a situation, hypothetically speaking, if only Maharashtrians are allowed to live and work in the state, I fear the worst for the western state’s overall progress and development.

What’s more, with fast-changing demographics in most Indian metros providing similar statistics in terms of ‘local-outsider’ ratios, I shudder to think what would happen to the GDP if all states start taking a similar stand on ‘outsiders’.

Till now, north Indians just restricted their reaction to such developments with a very sarcastic “Jai Maharashtra” greeting to their Maharashtrian pals. I wonder if their tolerance will continue now. How long will the ‘bhaiya’ remain a peaceful ‘bhai’?

It’s unfortunate that no one from the finance ministry was there at the three-day Neemrana Conference organized by ICRIER in collaboration with the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research – the annual conference, hosted on alternate years by NCAER, had the usual smattering of economists from India and the US presenting research of particular importance to policy makers. As it happened, most of the papers, were around themes of particular relevance around budget time – they pertained to the huge social programmes the government just can’t seem to get enough of.

No one expects the government to reduce social sector spending, given that it is convinced this is what ensured it got re-elected, but the papers (http://www.icrier.org/conference/2010/19jan10.html) provide some pointers for the way the government needs to reorient these programmes.

Take the expected increase in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) programme and the likely budgetary allocation for the Right to Education (RTE) Bill, the costs of which are being worked out and could well be upwards of Rs 60,000 crore when the programme is fully rolled out. Karthik Muralidharan of the University of California (along with Venkatesh Sundararaman of the World Bank) did a study of contract teachers in Andhra Pradesh and found that, over a period of two years, students taught by contract teachers fared better than those taught by the regular teachers – the contract teachers were less educationally qualified than the regular government teachers and earned a fifth! A parallel study, not presented at Neemrana, by NGO Pratham, of its annual survey across rural India, found much the same thing – private schools did significantly better than government ones. And this is rural India, so we’re not talking of the fancy DPS’s and Cathedral’s. Moral of the story: Extend SSA funds to private schools, perhaps use small unrecognized private schools as part of the RTE. The current thinking in government is quite the opposite – more funds to more government schools.

The Jawarhal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) is another favourite of the government but, as Isher Ahluwalia and her team pointed out, the programme isn’t quite working out and even existing reforms are being rolled back – the latest being states like Haryana rolling back their property taxes – in the absence of the government forcing states to reform if they want the JNNURM funding. Ramesh Ramanathan, one of the various social entrepreneurs Bangalore seems to churn out so many of (what IS it about the city?) had an interesting slide on how just 6 per cent of the names of the poor were common to the lists of the Karnataka Slum Clearance Board, the Directorate of Municipal Administration and the state’s food and civil supplies ministry – makes you wonder if the coming budget will make the unique ID a vital part of all future social sector spending, or will that upset the political big wigs who get a large part of all the leakages that take place from India’s vast social sector spending?

Sadly, the conference had no presentations on NREGA, the other BIG social programme of the government. If it had, it would have shown that while the programme contributes even less than one per cent of the total employment in the country, it has already started to create problems of raising wage rates in major agriculture areas – in other words, it may be destroying more jobs than it is creating. An equally interesting study, presented in previous Neemrana’s I’m sure, is to contrast rural roads building with NREGA – what causes more rural prosperity, NREGA-type jobs or more rural roads? It’ll likely be the latter.

Perhaps the finance ministry’s next retreat should be at Neemrana, right around the time the ICRIER-NCAER-NBER conference is being held next year?

I recall my Hindi teacher late Ms Vijayakumari who used to tell us every now and then after a unit test or our term-end exam: “Nakal karte samay toh apne akal ka istemaal kijiye.” (Roughly translated: Use your brains at least while copying.)

A global IT major sent out a release that spoke of their presence in more than 10 cities across the country. Among the cities it was present in was Comatose.

So, “we are now in Comatose.” Wonder what the customers would think of their products. If the company is in Comatose when will it wake up?

After going through the facts of the geographical spread of the company, you realise it was Coimbatore the company meant to say. But, our dependency on technology is so much, we seem to trust the computer and software more than our brains. The person who did the spell-check was probably ‘comatose’.

Clad in a khadi kurti made in one of those sweatshops, with not a single strand of her straightened hair out of place and those chiselled facial features that transcend sexual tendencies; this local train co-passenger resembled a Cajun goddess. What’s more, she was reading a book. Blame the male mindset, if you have to, I even imagined ourselves as literary soulpartners walking into the sunset with our hands held. Anticipating a Netherland or at least a Sue Townsend I peeped into what she was reading and, here lies the dampener, it was (drum roll) Chetan Bhagat’s “Two States”. Whoooosshh! That’s how the crumbling of my imaginary castle sounded.

Why would anyone endure writing that is clunky and is the LOL equivalent of literature? Isn’t Chetan Bhagat essential reading only for those below 12 years? Why does India celebrate writers who can’t string two sentences together? These were the initial questions that popped up in my mind. I tried to find a pattern but all I have been able to glean is that we swear by bestsellers. Look at the books that made waves in the recent past, Da Vinci Code, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series and, of course, Chetan Bhagat sack of chicken feed.

Most often you would find these names mentioned in the profiles of social networking sites’ users. I don’t mean that everyone ought to have mandarin tastes and should be reading W G Sebald and Patricia Highsmith. But do give Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy or closer to home, Samit Basu’s GameWorld trilogy a read.

It’s not the economic imbalance that is the difference between the third world countries and developed nations but the fact that printed word is celebrated in the latter and, well, not in the former. A US friend was telling me that everyone in the New York’s locals are to be seen reading books, a rare sight over here. My heart swells with pride at the sight of so many people reading the newspapers cover-to-cover in the Mumbai local trains. I hated Bangalore for not patronising newspapers (I, however, wonder why every newspaper is available in that bottomless pit of techiebabble). But then newspapers do not enrich one’s life the way books do. To think of it, they are not supposed to.

Some might say that the lack of reading culture may be attributed to the rise of Web but that is an argument that doesn’t deserve credence. A Pew Survey says that every American read at least ten books in 2009. This, when an average American spends ten hours on daily basis to swim across the ocean of hypertext links.

The cartoon in Atlantic Monthly captured the bestsellers’ phenomena very well by a bunch of kids holding Harry Potter books berating another child at a distance as ‘problem child’ for reading Charles Dickens. When I made a Mumbai friend privy to my rant, she said that the city is essentially ‘working class’. In that case, won’t Grapes of Wrath have greater resonance in Mumbaikars’ lives than Chetan Bhagat’s love story that is as interesting as watching wet paint getting dry.

I am not listening if you are going to mouth that gigantic cliche to justify proliferation of low brow art: “To each his own”.

The day of the solar eclipse was a dream I would like to relive many times more, and more frequently. Being able to walk on the road on a weekday in the morning peak hour without much worry about the traffic on the road or the noise from vehicle horns.

I wished such days came much more frequently. It will force all the pseudo-civilised motorists indoors for the pseudo-rationalists to enjoy some of the modern day luxuries, such as driving without having to negotiate noisy traffic. A pseudo-rationalist that I am, I decided to enjoy the less potent sunlight.

The shadows it created were just out of the world. Alas, I could not enjoy ‘my day out’. There were no shops or any eateries open. Everyone seemed to be under the influence of grandmother’s tales. No one wanted to take on grandmothers’ wisdom.

The venerable TV channels that people swear by only helped induce more fear into the hearts and minds of the citizenry with their “balanced” reporting which seemed to tilt the balance in favour of those who swear by grandmothers’ tales.
While some people advised to avoid cooking, eating and drinking during eclipse period. The myth behind this is some bad rays enter earth during eclipse and it could be harmful.

There are strict warnings for pregnant women. They are refrained from any stitch work and other household works. It is believed that it can lead to deformities in the foetus.

The astrologists advised people to chant regional rhymes to reduce its effect. They also advised Ganga Snan (Ganga bath) when eclipse is over (Perhaps, teleportation would have been the only solution).

As the annual solar eclipse falls on the second holy bath of Maha Kumbha Mela, people thronged to Haridwar to take holy dip after the eclipse.

But, the scientists were given some news space by the channels who sear by Gods and Godmen most of the time. But, people always find the words of scientists less credible.

While everyone concentrated on how the sun looked when partly covered by the moon, I wonder how many observed their shadow and how different it looked.

I hope all my science teachers will be proud of me. But, then… a science teacher of mine I met a day later looked out of sorts. She said, “I am yet to recover from my fast during the eclipse”.

The question is inevitable. It almost seems as though it’s programmed into the DNA of Delhiites and Mumbaikars. The moment they find someone from the other city in their own, out pops the query: Which city is better?

And you can’t cop out with some diplomatic “both are good in their own way” kind of answer. In fact, this reply should be construed as gross injustice to both cities, their denizens and the way of life they offer. Hell, the last two parameters provide the biggest differences known to any Indian, at least according to me.

Allow me to explain, and I will have to invariably be a wee bit diplomatic when it comes to attitudes! I find that Delhi and Mumbai differ the most on two counts: First, the citizens themselves. Those struggling and successful people, tired and tenacious, beaten and beautiful — all of them. Second, the infrastructure. This is a huge, huge factor. If one city’s infrastructure has been overwhelmed by nature, the other city’s nature has overwhelmed the infrastructure.

When I combine the two, I have an all-in-one reply to the question I first alluded to: In Mumbai, the people are great, but the infrastructure is nothing to talk about. In Delhi, the infrastructure is, compared with Mumbai’s, out of the world… (It’s here that I have to quickly become diplomatic!).

So, am I saying something like Delhiites are “…nothing to talk about”?!! Not at all. It’s Dilli dil walon ki, after all. But there’s no denying that, for some inexplicable reason, most people in New Delhi are far more on edge than any other city’s citizens. Tough, eveready to pick a fight, charging through traffic that’s madder than Mumbai’s… May be it’s all the wars and loads of imperial history the capital has gone through that has not only made its residents industrious but a real hardened lot too.

Funny thing is, of late, my indifference to all these undesirable attitudes has almost turned to pity, thanks to all kinds of “concern” being shown by none other than the politicians. Home Minister P Chidambaram has asked Delhiites to improve their behaviour for the Commonwealth Games. State Chief Minister Sheila Dixit said there was a “need to imbibe civic sense before the CWG”, or something to that effect.

My friends and colleagues in Delhi are always impressed by my tales of how Mumbaikars helped each other through floods, bomb blasts and terror attacks. When local trains halt operations, even Maruti 800 owners pack their cars with Mumbai commuters looking for a lift. Stranded people get water and biscuits, even Maggie. The first people on the spot after the train blasts were the slum-dwellers living along the tracks. They saved many precious lives.

My pals in the capital are more impressed with all this as they maintain Delhiites would just look after themselves rather than extend a helping hand. Trouble is, this is easy to say, but nigh impossible to prove. Mumbaikars may have shown their better side repeatedly through some of the worst situations known to urban residents. If Delhiites need to earn the same tough-but-caring attitude, they will have to go through what Mumbaikars have gone — something that I will never wish for any person in any country. I say it’s far better to be labeled with something than labour through some of the most tragic and horrific incidents known to man.

Where Delhi does score is its infrastructure. Open skies (you just get to see a sliver of the blue between Mumbai’s high-rises), wide streets (let us not even mention Mumbai’s situation) and the very fact that it’s the capital city, earn Delhiites certain privileges on the street. And there are improvements galore due to the upcoming CWG event.

But, like in any other big city of India, the infrastructure is under serious threat from over-population, lack of co-ordination and the very real desi danger of losing focus once the games conclude. A case in point: Even with streets that can any day take at least four cars side-by-side on just one side of the road, there are massive traffic jams almost on a daily basis in Delhi. Nothing surprising, given that Delhi has more vehicles than the rest of the three metros put together!

The Metro helped. But even that is succumbing to the overwhelming numbers created by the new connections to Noida and Vaishali (Ghaziabad). Just last week, thanks to the Auto Expo crowds, a colleague of mine could not get down at the intended Pragati Maidan station and was, instead, forced to go onto to the next station. You usually get to hear tales like these only on Mumbai’s local trains and that, too, due to the bone-crushing crowds during rush hour. My colleague was travelling at 3 pm in the afternoon — in Delhi!

It’s clear to me that, as far as my first take is concerned, round one belongs to Mumbai!

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar is furious, arguably with just cause. There he was, quietly minding his own business, when whoosh ! Sugar turns Rs 50 a kg, the Uttar Pradesh government starts filing FIRs against sugar mill owners who are also Pawar’s friends and friends in other parties shrug their shoulders and say: ‘Sorry pal, hate to do this, but you should have taken care of things’, following it with the most trenchant attack on an agriculture minister in recent times.

Food inflation is the single most important factor responsible for a rise in inflation. Food prices, especially sugar prices, have gone through the roof. As rise in sugar prices is related to the supply side and production is cyclical, Finance Ministry manadarins say Pawar should have known this and made adequate preparations. Instead, India is going round the world, cap in hand, to buy sugar and is pleading with suppliers not to be unreasonable.
Just as the production of sugar is cyclical, so are Pawar’s political fortunes.

The downfall began somewhere in the beginning of 2005 when Sharad Pawar decided to contest the elections for the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) again. Much of that year was spent first lobbying, then consolidating his position and then trying to free BCCI of the tentacles of Jagmohan Dalmiya, the elements that had caused his defeat earlier. As anyone involved in cricket politics knows, it is hard to reach the pinnacle of the cricket administration empire and harder still to stay there. Understandably it occupied a lot of Pawar’s time and attention. Now, he is president in waiting of the ICC. That too takes time.

Between then and now, it’s been one wild ride, with the general elections and the Maharashtra assembly elections intervening. In December 2009, Sharad Pawar was also elected president of his party for the fourth consecutive term. His party, ever vigilant and sensitive to rising prices, passed this resolution:  “The abnormal rise in prices is causing great difficulty to the common man.  Recent draught situation in certain parts of the country has caused a little spur in the prices of essential articles including vegetables.  But the government is seriously monitoring the situation to make essential commodities available at reasonable prices.  This warrants more intervention by the state government in the market, over and above strengthening of the Public Distribution System which will curtail the rise in prices of essential commodities to some extent.  At the same time the government of India should take effective steps to arrest the tendency of ever
increasing prices of essential commodities.”

Meanwhile, cricket management was also a problem. At the height of the food prices conundrum, the agriculture minister batted at queries by pesky reporters. “I am not an astrologer. I don’t know when sugar prices will come down” he snapped when asked a question. He was a lot more forthcoming about cricket, though. “The ICC will take a decision next week on whether to allow the Feroz Shah Kotla to host World Cup matches in 2011” he said, two days after David Morgan, the ICC president,  had said he was not in favour of a World Cup ban on the venue, which had been classified by the ICC match referee Alan Hurst as “unfit”, the harshest possible assessment after the abandoned fixture between India and Sri Lanka last month.

“I am not going to give any opinion on this issue. The ICC is yet to finally take a decision and the process is on. The BCCI is expecting a response from the ICC probably next month or in two months,” Pawar said after chairing the meeting of the World Cup organising committee in Dhaka earlier in January. “It is the biggest cricketing event in the subcontinent and I am sure the way the preparations have been going on it will be a hugely successful event and security will be no issue. India and Sri Lanka have the prior experience of hosting the World Cup and it will be a great event.”

Really? And sugar prices will come down soon too?

It is useful to remind ourselves what happened with wheat during the last term of the United Progressive Alliance. Then  too, it was Pawar who was agriculture and food minister.
In October-November 2005, it was clear that India was on a brink of a wheat shortage. The Prime Minister began signaling that the Agriculture Ministry should prepare itself for imports. Because procurement by the Food Corporation of India had fallen sharply the previous year and there was a global shortage of wheat, the danger was that wheat supplied to ration shops might fall short.

What did the government do?

The Agriculture Ministry thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it.
The Prime Minister flagged the danger of a wheat shortage in December 2004. Imports began in February 2005. Wheat traders denied strenuously, the charge that in the intervening period they had stashed away the commodity until prices rose. “Where would we store such large quantities” they asked. They also denied charges of round-tripping - wheat procured from India, sent out of India and later resold to the Indian Government after a hefty markup.

Worse followed. There were suggestions from some foreign entities that phytosanitary standards of wheat imported by India had been altered to help other foreign entities. The Ministry realized that the amount of wheat already imported would not be enough so tenders were called for a second tranche. Even before the tenders were opened, in a momentary fit of absentmindedness the Agriculture minister made a policy announcement – that import duty for private sector importers would be slashed from 50 per cent to zero. Sensing a rush of buyers from India, global bidders pushed up prices.

No prizes for guessing what is going to happen with sugar this time.

So tedious. So predictable !