Modi ji, burning files not going to save you: Rahul on Shastri Bhawan fire

Adding fuel to the fire

A fire broke out at New Delhi's Shastri Bhavan on Tuesday. Shastri Bhavan houses several union ministries, including information and broadcasting and corporate affairs. The Delhi Fire Service pushed half a dozen tenders into service. Congress President Rahul Gandhi (pictured) was quick to tweet this: "Modiji burning files is not going to save you. Your day of judgement is coming." Fire department officials maintained nothing of any importance was burnt. "The fire broke out on the top floor in the waste material of cooler and electrical wires. The reason behind the fire has not been ascertained," a fire official said. However, the Congress social media team latched on to the incident to trigger some wild theories, including one about important files being burnt.

 
What’s in a meme

While politicians of our era might consider social media to be the best thing to have happened to them, here's at least one person who thinks it has done more harm than good. During the launch of a book, The Real Face of Facebook in India, in the capital on Tuesday, Delhi University professor and public intellectual Apoorvanand pointed out how one of the problems with Facebook is that it has reduced public conversations to memes. And memes, in turn, have reduced the whole discipline of public debate into a game one-upmanship. "Phrases like aag laga di (destroying something) or khaat khadi kar di (putting someone in great trouble) have entered the discourse, which is not a good thing," he said. The book has been authored jointly by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Cyril Sam and, as the name suggests, talks about the hidden dangers of Facebook.

 
Call data

The tribal majority district of Dhar in Madhya Pradesh has taken pride of place in an Election Commission (EC) ranking. According to district-wise data of calls received by the EC's call centre, people of Dhar made some 1,700 calls since the implementation of the model code of conduct, catapulting the district among the top callers. Of these, only 72 were made to lodge complaints. As many as 659 calls were made to offer suggestions and another 223 calls were about poll-related query. Of course, the highest number of calls in the state were made from Indore. People from the city made 6,574 calls, of which 5,765 calls were made to seek information and another 618 to lodge complaints.