Touching a raw nerve

The bone of contention is RAW, which handles external intelligence gathering. Narayanan, a former police officer, has called for a major rehaul of the elite secretive organisation in the wake of the recent spy scandal. He wants an outsider, from the IB, appointed as the next RAW chief when C D Sahay retires at the end of January. Dixit feels that RAW is linked with the Ministry of External Affairs and should be his baby.

Rao’s Buddha Bar

As prime minister, Narasimha Rao’s relationship with Sonia Gandhi was ambiguous to say the least. On the surface he was all deference. But in the early days of his prime ministership, on the advice of the mischievous Sitaram Kesri, he stopped the practice of making regular calls at 10 Janpath. Relations between him and Sonia soured shortly afterwards.

Ostracized by most of the Congress when he demitted office, Rao had an enigmatic attitude towards the party’s first family in his last years. When I interviewed Rao before the release of his book The Insider, which was a semi-autobiographical novel, he slipped in the meaningful remark that in a party like the Congress, with its long democratic traditions, there was no room for a dynasty. Did that mean there was no place for the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, I asked in amazement. Without batting an eyelid the erudite Rao explained gravely that you couldn’t really call them a dynasty. First there was an agnate, then there was a cognate. (His Congress colleagues were busy looking up the dictionary the next day to figure out what he meant).

No home comfort

When Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy hosted a dinner for the Delhi media last week, representatives of the leading Malayali newspapers and TV channels were excluded. The organisers felt that the regional press would put a dampener on the proceedings since they were obsessed with raking up old and unproven scandals and controversies. But it was not a very smart move to blackball the Malayali press. Irate journalists from the Kerala media stationed themselves outside the Oberoi hotel where the dinner was held and took snapshots of all the invitees. In fact, they managed to pose several questions to the CM via SMS messages to friendly journalists inside.

The audio-visual of 100 days of Chandy’s rule shown to the guests did not go down well with some in Chandy’s own party. They felt he was trying to score points over his predecessor, A K Antony. For instance, one of the statistics in the AV claimed that the Chandy government had cleared 76 per cent of all pending files as compared to only 30 per cent by the previous regime. The plush Mountbatten terrace suite at the Oberoi which was the venue highlighted the difference between the two CMs. The austere Antony would have deemed such five-star luxury unnecessary and provided the journalists a cup of tea at the most. Still fuming over not being invited, the combative regional media has made a major issue in the local press of the fact that liquor was served, though the dinner in fact was on a more modest scale than many of those thrown by chief ministers from other states.

Hen Party at RC Rd

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s wife Gursharan Kaur held an unusual hen party at Race Course Road last week. She invited women ministers and the spouses of the male ministers who hardly know one another. The gracious hostess made every effort to ensure that the two sets of invitees mingled, since she is aware that ministerial wives who come from outside Delhi are often lonely. There was a heated debate on the DPS MMS scandal at the lunch. Another popular subject of discussion was diets, with a minister’s wife knowledgeable on nutrition expanding on the merits of different methods of losing weight. Politics was not on the menu. The atmosphere was informal and some minister’s wives brought their daughters-in-law as well. One showed up with her two grandchildren, who insisted on running around and plucking the petals of the prize dahlias, despite the forceful Renuka Choudhary’s remonstrations and the pained look on Sonia Gandhi’s face.

Doctors in the House

Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, himself a doctor, hosted a dinner last Monday for all the 25 MPs who are members of the medical profession. (Doctors honorary or academic, such as Vijay Mallya and Manmohan Singh, were not included). There were MPs of varying political hues, from the far right to the extreme left, at the dinner, but there was no bad blood. The doctors discussed population planning, health infrastructure, HIV/AIDS and AIIMS. Dr Kathiria, a cancer surgeon and BJP MP who was one of the founders of the Forum of MP Doctors in 1996, explained: ‘‘We are men of science, we deal in facts. When we are together there is no disagreement.’’

The 14 doctors who attended the dinner included Shaqeel Ahmed, MoS Communications, Jaganath Manda (TDP), P Pookunhikoya (JD-U), Chhatrapal Singh (BJP), Sujan Chakraborty (CPI-M), and Tushar Chaudhary (Congress).