Quality enthusiasm
``Quality in Government''. It might sound like an oxymoron to doubting Thomases, but slowly and surely, things are changing-at least at the individual level. The Summit organisers were pleasantly surprised at the number of delegates who signed up to attend the full-day session. And unlike the usual freebie attitude bureaucrats are supposed to exude-these 135 delegates duly paid up Rs 1,200 each to register. What's more, the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration even coughed up Rs 1 lakh to sponsor the special plenary session. Now, if that isn't quality enthusiasm, what is?

Number 13 for luck?
Talking about corruption in government, Central Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal quoted Prime Minister AB Vajpayee as saying: ``We should have zero-tolerance for corruption'' when he was sworn in PM for the third time. With a smile on his face, Vittal said: ``If you look at the term zero-tolerance, it has 13 letters. And 13 is a lucky number for Vajpayee. He took over as PM first for 13 days then 13 month and now....''
Mr PM, are you listening?

Quality vs quantity
Quality was not such an issue as quantity, at the session on new product development on the second day of the CII Quality Summit. The speakers at the session had so much to say that most presentations overshot their respective time limits by more than half-an-hour each.
It was a tough job for the session chairman who, with all his tact and politeness, had to push the speakers off stage midway through their presentations as their grace period lapsed.
The audience could, however, have done with shorter, more meaningful expositions. After all, what else was the entire affair about but quality!

Colourful contest
Even as sales staff from American Express was busy scouting for potential customers for its credit cards at the Summit venue, companies like Epson India made better use of the event. As part of its brand building exercise, the company launched `The Great Epson Contest' on the second day. It will shortly launch the contest in other major metros.``We chose this venue in a bid to catch the attention of the delegates who had come to attend the Summit.'' said Monica Bajaj, Epson India.
`Bring us the colours of your life,' said a poster displayed at the venue, inviting delegates to share their colourful moments by sending photos, drawings and sketches to the company. The lucky winner gets to take home an `Epson Stylus 440 printer'.

Oxymoron's galore
Former Hewlett Packard head Suresh Rajpal, while chairing one of the sessions on Quality in Government was at his wittiest best. According to him, `quality in government' sounded like an oxymoron, and went on to give examples which had the audience in splits. Consider: Advance BASIC (a software); Diet Ice-cream; Found missing; Legally drunk; Passive aggression; Silent scream; A small crowd; Terribly pleased; Working vacation.