Memory plus

The pricing formula for gas produced by Reliance Industries from the D6 basin off the Andhra coast may have been at the centre of many controversies and condemnation till recently, but an unlikely adjective for it came from Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia at a book launch on Tuesday. Ahluwalia, an economist by training, not only rattled off the complicated formula from memory, he described it as “cute” and without rationale. “We need to demolish such things,” he went on to add. Here perhaps Ahluwalia's impressive recall failed him — since he was part of the group of ministers that approved this “irrational” formula in 2007.