Present and eating

It is not unusual for journalists to receive multiple messages and emails from the Press Information Bureau (PIB) for a press conference or announcement by the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation (HUPA). But the PIB recently surpassed itself by bombarding journalists on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning with at least a dozen reminder text messages and mails for a conference that was to be held on Wednesday afternoon - at which minister Girija Vyas was scheduled to talk about a housing start-up index. That wasn't all. The lavish lunch at Le Meridien saw record attendance, mainly of people from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation and the HUPA ministry. Vyas' speech was on the number of housing units being built for slum dwellers and migrants across the country, which explained the flurry of reminders to journalists (elections are round the corner, after all) but not the huge numbers of non-journalists present.