Seven Days

New Delhi
Austerity, What’s That?

Former PM Manmohan Singh used to exhort his ministers to visibly tighten their purse-strings every few months, but now that UPA is history, Congressmen are letting loose. Kapil Sibal, who termed the Rs 1,72,000-crore 2G scam a “zero-loss” one and managed only a similar number of votes (minus the crores) from Chandni Chowk, has rented a luxurious 1,250 square yard house in Lutyens’ Delhi for a discounted price of Rs 16 lakh per month. Apparently, the property owner wanted Rs 18 lakh per month, but using his famously soft negotiating skills, Sibal, one of India’s top lawyers, was able to hammer it down with no zero-loss to the exchequer.

Tamil Nadu
Reaping The whirlwind

Even under ex-star Jayalalitha’s watch, artistic freedom is not a given in the state. A Sinhala-Tamil film Oba Nathuwa, Oba Ekka (With You, Without You) has been pulled out of theatres, after receiving threat calls from pro-Tamil nationalist groups. The bilingual movie, adapted from Dostoevsky’s The Gentle Creature, looks at the civil war’s after-effects in upcountry Sri Lanka through a Sinhala-Tamil love story.

Andaman & Nicobar
A Bird In Hand

Only 300 of the Narcondam Hornbills are left in the Andaman & Nicobar islands, but what chance has a little bird before a bristling 56-inch chest? The UPA had shelved a proposed radar project to monitor China from the Bay of Bengal, but in less than a month of Modi sarkar, environment minister Prakash Javadekar has cleared it. And this despite dire warnings from scientists at the Bombay Natural History Society.

New Delhi
Fruits Of Power

Mahendra Prasad, the JD(U) Rajya Sabha member from Bihar known to his people as ‘King Mahendra’, had his Peepli Live moment last week when TV cameras swarmed his residence, after his personal assistant filed a complaint about two jackfruits going missing from the garden of the MP’s bungalow. The police questioned a gardener, security guards and the domestic help, but there was no trace of the sweet booty. “They must have been cooked and eaten,” an officer investigating the theft told The Indian Express.

London
Aunty In Agony

Achche Din are a long way away even for journalists looking at Narendra Modi from several continents away. Yalda Hakim, a 31-year-old BBC reporter of Afghan origin, who used the word “controversial” while reporting Modi’s triumph, is facing the heat from Priti Patel, a Tory MP who fashions herself as a “diaspora champion”. Patel has written to the Beeb’s bosses about Hakim doing little to counter Bombay-born architect Anish Kapoor’s labelling of Modi as a “mass murderer”. The programme’s director rejected the charge: “We immediately offered (the journalist) Swapan Dasgupta the chance to respond to Kapoor’s comments, which he did in the strongest terms.” All’s well that ends....

Maharashtra
Gods Versus Godmen

Swami Swaroopananda hit the headlines before the elections when he objected to the bjp’s ‘Har Har Modi’ slogan. Now the Shankaracharya of the Dwarka peeth has riled Shirdi Sai Baba devotees saying he was a human being, not a God to be worshipped. Also, he was a non-vegetarian who encouraged circumcision. And who does that? Oh, oh, we know who.

Gujarat
Surti Power

Narendra Modi cruised to Delhi using the ‘Gujarat Model’, but in the capital, the ‘Surat Model’ is the season’s flavour. The diamond town once infamous for the plague is being courted by municipal bodies for its intelligent deployment of CCTV cameras using the public-private partnership model. The ‘rent-a-roof’ scheme pioneered by Surat to generate electricity using solar power by setting up sun panels on government buildings is also catching the fancy of the power-starved.