Trash talk

The Narendra Modi-led government believes in leading by example. So after Modi surprised his PMO staff some time back, walking around the premises and meeting members of his office, it was the turn of his protege, human & resource development minister Smriti Irani, who took a walking tour of her congested ministry at Shastri Bhavan. Now we hear that Maneka Gandhi's women and child development (WCD) ministry officials got busy over the weekend disposing of "dead stock, furniture and clearing unwanted files" to reclaim office space. And, of course, the media-savvy "Modi sarkar" has ensured that a "press release" was issued, informing journalists that the WCD ministry has worked "over the weekend to weed out about 1,800 files/documents and about 1,350 kgs of files and waste paper".