Ananth Kumar, union minister for civil aviation, laughingly countered queries on his ministry's alleged closeness with the Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways. "I cannot help it if my predecessors earned this reputation, but I am much more objective" said the minister.

High profle over Tata

Ananth Kumar, who has kept a remarkably low profile since taking over as civil aviation minister, was in his elements. The minister had obviously come prepared to be hauled over the coals as two prestigious Tata projects had been withdrawn recently admist much hype. Kumar quoted figures and statistics off-the-cuff, and did not fight shy of answering any queries from eager journalists. In fact, when an attempt was made to limit the Tata-related discussion, the minister was heard encouraging "Let them ask whatever they want to".

Sinha Gets Even

The finance minister announced at the conference that the economy is at last experiencing the ``feel good factor.'' This, he saidwas happening after the media had condemned him and his budget as a disaster. He described himself as the most maligned finance minister ever. The objective of the sarcasm: to cock a snook at a 100 mediapersons before him and tell them that they were wrong about him.

Foot In The Mouth

Ramakrishna Hegde is known to be smooth with words. But at the conference he put his foot in his mouth. Confidently he announced that the denomination of foreign trade should change from dollars to some other currency to control the economic imperialism of the US. P P Prabhu, the suave commerce secretary, took it upon himself to control the damage during the lunch break.

Facelift for Hegde

Commerce is next in importance to finance. This was made obvious to the large audience as the commerce minister joined the conference immediately after Sinha. Hegde's image building staff led by the deputy principal information officer were in full form. Mediapersons were deluged with the maximum amount of paper.Accompanying a copy of the minister's speech were several documents meticulously put together to show the minister in the best light.

Flood of promises

Agriculture minister Som Pal had a few embarrassing moments when reporters questioned him on the steps taken by the government so far to check regular occurence of floods and drought. Som Pal did his best to duck the issue by saying that the government will soon come out with a new agriculture policy which will address these problems. The problem is that the minister had been making this promise repeatedly but the policy is yet to see the light of the day. One hopes it has not been washed away in the floods.