The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Irritants to netas!

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Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Irritants to netas!

Interviews with celebrities are a common feature in newspapers. But, questions posed to interviewees often nettle our netas. There would be trouble even more if the reporter asks questions about the difficult and strained relationship between two leaders occupying coveted positions in organisations like the VMC.

Questions such as “It seems your deputy is hogging the lime light…”, “People feel that your deputy is not consulting you before taking decisions…” apparently annoy them. A senior Congress leader, referring to a report in a vernacular daily, recently said: “You scribes are determined to spoil our family and nuptial. Hence, you pose such questions to create a fissure in our relationship.”

Spirited tribute

Everyday the general public is confronted by various kinds of banners on the thoroughfares. Banners glorifying the political parties, their leaders or discount offers by the shopping malls crop up dime a dozen each day. But one unique banner caught the imagination of everybody soon after the encounter in New Delhi that resulted in the arrest of two terrorists and the death of braveheart police officer Mohan Chand Sharma.

The Kethanakonda-based CBR Sports Academy has put up the banners at a few places in the city hailing the sacrifice of Mr. Sharma, thus stoking the nationalist spirit among the citizens. Something for others to emulate, indeed.

All effort for the best

It was an occasion for pictures. Ministers Ponnala Lakshmaiah and Mandali Buddha Prasad and Kankipadu MLA Devineni Rajasekhar posed nonchalantly for lensmen in the picturesque background of a new bridge constructed across Indira Sagar Right Canal.

Obliging the request of lensmen, the Ministers and the MLA posed standing precariously close to the end of the canal, a part that still needed to be paved. Mr. Rajasekhar, in a bid to strike a chord with the photographers, said: “Why are you clicking so many photos? We know there is space only for one.” “It is said that a picture says more than a thousand words. So we want to be sure what we say is the best,” was the repartee of a senior photographer.

Scribes ‘unmoved’

Presspersons were taken aback for a minute when they were invited to come on to the dais at a function organised for felicitating the wholesale dealers of ITC at Hotel Fortune Murali Park the other day.

After the speeches of dignitaries and felicitations were over, the anchor suddenly turned to the front rows and started saying that a curious announcement was in the offing.

Finally, she said she was inviting the presspersons on to the dais “just as a token of respect”.

No scribe moved an inch from their seats. Some wondered whether they would also be felicitated. Seeing no positive response, the anchor persisted a few times more and gave up. She turned to the felicitated persons to give their impressions about the function and continued from there.

An eye-opener

Medical care is the best in United States of America with a cream of the world serving its population day-in and day-out, but how does it get so many experts in all the specialties, is the question. A strategic decision was taken by the American Medical Association more than two decades ago to cap the number of medical graduates passing out from its institutions at 18,500 and ensuring all of them studied in some Post-Graduate institution.

The country invests millions of dollars in post-graduate medical studies by creating 24,500 seats and attracts cream of world doctors to study there and serve them.

American Medical Association executive vice-president and CEO Michael D. Maves says larger number of medical graduates are likely to pass out from medical schools in the US from next year, but quality of students pursuing PG studies would be maintained. It was an eye-opener for medical fraternity celebrating platinum jubilee of MCI at NRI Medical College in Guntur as a majority of those foreign students in the US come from India at the cost of quality medi care in their own country.

(G.V.R. Subba Rao, J.R. Shridharan, G.V. Ramana Rao, G. Ravi Kiran in Vijayawada and Ramesh Susarla in Guntur)

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