"Kaam ki baat" as important as "mann ki baat": Gehlot takes a jibe at Modi

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot (pictured) took an apparent jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popular radio programme Mann ki baat when he said that “kaam ki baat” was just as important as “mann ki baat” (heart-to-heart conversations). He made this statement at the inauguration ceremony of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF). Gehlot said JLF was the place where thinkers across the world came and did "kaam ki baat" along with "mann ki baat". Now the phrase kaam ki baat can be interpreted in two different ways: A conversation which is useful or a conversation which is about work. Which one did the Congress veteran have in mind?

Delayed starts

Election seasons and time schedules aren’t the best of friends but it has become almost a routine affair for press conferences organised by various political parties in Delhi, which is gearing up for its Assembly elections, to start after long delays. These gatherings, organised around evenings or late afternoons, have been starting 30 to 45 minutes behind schedule on a regular basis with the parties blaming the city's traffic for the wait. On Thursday, even a national spokesperson of a party, who was supposed to address the media, was made to wait. A senior leader advised the waiting scribes to turn up at future events 15 minutes after the scheduled time. Keeping up with the tradition, the presser started 40 minutes after the time printed on the invite.

More power to women

There are several sectors in India that have a skewed gender ratio at the workplace, the power sector being one of them. So efforts at diversity... or the optics of it... are hard to miss but a recent event, organised by an industry association, took it to a completely new level. First, the event on "women power" aimed to "electrify the women in you". The session was held at an "women empowerment pavilion" which hosted a workshop on "harmonising work and life" and a talk show on "how to face gender biased challenges in the field of engineering", among other things. There were lectures by women leaders — ironically, not from the power sector — on "she believed she could, so she did". Needless to say, men members among the audience were conspicuous by their absence.