Thaindian News

New Delhi, July 15 (IANS) And now, it’s the T-word, with “transparency” fast becoming the buzzword in parliament.
Be it finance, external affairs, education, civil aviation or what have you, ministers are literally falling over themselves to assure the two houses of parliament that “everything will be done in an open and transparent” manner.

On Wednesday, it was the turn of Kamal Nath, the minister for road transport and highways, to use the word - at the prompting of Ravi Shankar Prasad of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Posing a supplementary during question hour, Prasad said he expected a “credible and transparent” answer.

“Sir, my replies are always credible and transparent,” Kamal Nath immediately retorted, leading to Home Minister P. Chidambaram vigorously thumping his desk in approval.

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Sanskrit to Urdu, Meenakshi Natrajan covers it all

The Lok Sabha Wednesday reverberated with the loud thumping of desks by members across the spectrum when Meenakshi Natrajan, a young first-time Congress MP from Madhya Pradesh, concluded her maiden speech in the house.

Speaking in chaste Hindi, Natrajan quoted everything from Sanskrit shlokas, to Sant Kabir, to Mahatma Gandhi to Urdu poet Iqbal to Vivekanand, intermittently drawing applause.

Natrajan, 36, had been handpicked by Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi to contest from the Mandsaur constituency.

Her suggestion, during the discussion on the demand for grants of the human resource development (HRD) ministry, that students be handed over their corrected mark sheets to enable them rectify their errors even had HRD Minister Kapil Sibal thumping his desk in appreciation.

“We are always told to learn from past mistakes but more often than not, we don’t know what the mistakes were. If the students are given the corrected mark sheets, they will know what their mistakes were,” Natrajan maintained.

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In dad’s footsteps?

Supriya Sule, the daughter of Nationalist Congress Party chief and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, virtually delineated her party’s policy when she spoke on Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal’s suggestion for a common higher secondary education board for the entire country.

“Our full support is there for having a board connecting Kashmir to Kanyakumari,” she said, as several members applauded. The 40-year-old first-time Lok Sabha MP spoke with the confidence of a veteran.

“The CBSC, the ISCE and the Maharashtra Board are all at loggerheads,” she pointed out, adding that this created disparity among students.

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Kapil Sibal, the hardworking ’student’

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, who has suggested several far-reaching educational reforms, Wednesday looked every bit a sincere “student” eager to learn what was being said in class.

He heard with rapt attention every member who spoke in the Lok Sabha during discussion on the demand for grants of his ministry, wearing his reading glasses and taking copious notes.

In between, he consulted his papers but did not miss a single suggestion by members, especially those of the opposition parties. Sibal, the saying goes, had requested the prime minister to allot him the high profile ministry - and he has been very excited about it ever since.

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Bonding the Jayaprada-Vijayshanti way

Put this one down to good old female bonding.

Former actor Jayaprada, who has just been re-elected to the Lok Sabha, noticed first-timer and fellow actor Vijayshanti sitting all by herself on one of the back benches. She immediately got up from her middle row seat and went and sat with Vijayshanti.

“Vijayshanti might be getting lessons on parliamentary proceedings from Jayaprada,” remarked a Lok Sabha veteran.

There could be more to it than that. After all, apart from being actors, both are from Andhra Pradesh and would have a lot in common between them. Of course, they belong to different parties - Jayaprada to the Samajwadi Party and Vijayshanti to the Telangana Rashtra Samiti - but that hardly matters.