Sonia: Shy or Savvy?

Which Gandhi figures most frequently on the Internet? Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi? Indira Gandhi? or Rajiv Gandhi? Actually none of the three. The Gandhi most found on the Internet is Sonia Gandhi, whose name is mentioned over 20,000 times. In contrast, Rajiv Gandhi's name crops up only around 10,000 times. Indira Gandhi has 6,000 mentions, Mahatma Gandhi 5,000 and Maneka Gandhi a mere 2,000.

The references to the other Gandhis have been keyed in by varied sources and concern their work in Government, nation building or speeches. However, nearly every mention of Sonia has been fed in by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF). The Internet provides a diary of her day-to-day movements, the trivia includes whom she meets and which functions she attends. Sonia is generally portrayed as publicity shy, but the RGF's love of the Internet suggests that she is rather publicity savvy!

The descriptions provided by the RGF of Sonia, Priyanka and Rahul -- all three figure on the 12-member board of governors of the foundation - embroider the reality. Sonia is ``an eminent social worker in her own right''. Priyanka, who helps her husband in his jewellery export business is, described as ``teacher and educationist''. (She taught in a primary school for a few days as part of a class project.) Rahul's achievements are put rather modestly as ``having done an advanced computer course in Boston'' and not as a student at Harvard University as newspapers have been erroneously claiming.

Fourth time Lucky

Thrice in the past R.C. Sharma was all set to take over as Director, CBI, but each time the crown was cruelly snatched from him at the eleventh hour. In March 1996, former CBI Director Vijayarama Rao was due to retire, but at the last moment the Supreme Court gave him a three-month extension. When Deve Gowda became Prime Minister, he indicated to Sharma that he was making him Director but changed his mind. In his last days in office, Gowda tried to shunt out Tiger Joginder. The proposal for his removal was cleared, but then Gowda got cold feet. Since Singh had snatched all important investigations from Sharma he was basically marking time till retirement, when fortune finally favoured him. Sharma's detractors charge that he has been soft-pedalling the Bofors investigations which is why during Chandra Shekhar's tenure K. Madhavan was taken off the investigations and Sharma brought in. Some even blame Sharma for allowing Quattrocchi to slip out of the country.

Taming the Tiger

During his nine-month tenure, CBI Director Joginder Singh made some half-a-dozen trips abroad. His destinations included France, Switzerland, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Dubai. His travel allowances add up to an impressive five-figure sum in dollars. The Government is not averse to leaking the figure if Singh causes it further embarrassment.

It is India's turn to host the annual Interpol meet held normally at the end of the year. Singh had persuaded the Interpol executive board to schedule it for early October so that he could play host just before his retirement. Now his successor, R.C. Sharma as CBI Director will be in charge of the prestigious conference.

Hitting Back

Former Prime Minister Deve Gowda has been hinting darkly that he has with him documents exposing his adversaries, with Sitaram Kesri and Chandrababu Naidu heading the list of targets. But so far the only person Gowda has succeeded in embarrassing is the normally unflappable Revenue Secretary N.K. Singh. The powerful and well-connected Singh -- who even when he was supposedly in the dog house for his Emergency excesses was given a plum punishment posting in Tokyois keen to become next Cabinet Secretary after T.S.R. Subramanian retires. Singh, anxious to disassociate himself from the charge of shielding press baron Ashok Jain, implied his orders were at the behest of Gowda. He did not bargain that the former PM would promptly issue a lengthy denial. In fact, Gowda insists he lost his job because of the Enforcement Directorate raid on Jain.

Eastward Ho!

Star TV's brainwave to switch from an all-English channel to half-Hindi has not turned out to be such a good idea. With a crowded field of language TV channels in both the North and the South, the Star channel is now looking eastwards for expansion. Star TV plans a new Bengali channel for both India and Bangladesh with TV Today providing Bengali news programmes. While there is undoubtedly a large viewership for this SAARC channel, the ques-tion is whether there is enough advertising revenue.