Eavesdropper / Wish you were here

Our irrepressible Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan’s notched up another fan to add to his steadily increasing list. The latest addition is the president of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The gentleman first heard the savvy minister in New Delhi in January and during that visit he was quite enamoured with the Indian IT ministry’s achievements under Mr Mahajan’s leadership.

Now Jakarta is all set to host the G-15 (group of developing nations) forum later this week. In that context, the industry body invited the minister to attend the meet. Mr Mahajan however politely declined, stating that he was busy with “state business”. Well, the president was not one to give up. He then sought a written speech from Mr Mahajan. As things stand, the speech will now be read out in Jakarta, in absentia.

Most definitely a case of out of sight but not out of mind.

Food for thought
Power breakfasts, lunches and dinners have been quite the norm in India since a while, both in the corporate set-up and, indeed, in political circles. So much so that they hardly get talked or written about. But now that India seems to have made its mark, internationally, in the arena of dinner diplomacy, it’s worth putting this across in print.

Recently, information technology (IT) moghul John Chambers — the stylish head of Cisco Systems — waxed eloquent on India’s dinner diplomacy at a global forum. Recounting at Davos his visit last month to India, he beamed: “I’d never realised that India was fast catching up with the international ways of conducting business at the dining table”. Mr Chambers may well have had in mind the private dinner hosted for him by IT Minister Pramod Mahajan (yes, him again!) at which particular wining and dining session, Mr Chambers had an over two-hour interface with the IT whizkids of the country.