E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

NEW-RESEARCH MONITOR

Success and being nice don't mix
Successful people are egotistical, stubborn and disagreeable. A report on the findings which are bad news for those who believe the meek shall inherit the earth. If you want to get ahead, be egotistical, stubborn and disagreeable. And a bit of untidiness will help too.

Tired and stressed workers earn more
New research suggests that there is a correlation between sleeping less than six hours each night and depression, and success. What's all the more surprising is that success is also correlated with heavy smoking and drug and alcohol abuse.

Superstition linked to lower IQ
Superstition can be linked to lower IQ rates and poorer exam performance. But belief in UFOs is the exception often linked with coming top of the class.

Now, cybersex industry

Women have made massive inroads in the cybersex industry. Their main motivation is to work more for themselves, without being exploited by men, says Tracy McVeigh.

A power shift is taking place in the traditionally male-dominated sex industry with the arrival of a new breed of entrepreneur: the webmistress.

More than 50 per cent of websites in the booming online pornography business are now owned and operated by women — and the number is steadily rising.

The new 'scarlet-collar' worker is typically a 25 to 35-year-old former prostitute or lap dancer with young children and a desire to better her income while working from home. She has working class roots and hides her profession behind a veneer of suburban respectability.

A psychologist has described the webmistress phenomenon as 'neo-feminism'. "Women whose lives were once controlled by male pimps, porn film-makers and publishers are moving up the food chain," said Dr Kimberlianne Podlas.

A former New York criminal lawyer and now a leading psychologist at the Bryant Institute in New Jersey, Podlas began using her legal contacts to track down women in cyberporn.

"I was very surprised to find just how many women were involved," she said.

"In terms of intelligence, these webmistresses are not high ranking, but their motivation is fierce. If someone is going to make money out of their bodies and their images, then they want it to be themselves.

"This really is a liberation for women in the sex industry."

Podlas talked to the owners of 71 heterosexual websites. She believes cyberporn may have to be re-evaluated by feminists.

"It may, in fact, combat negative imagery and increase women's power," she said.

It is a point of view shared by Lauren, 29. Last year she gave up a nine-to-five clerical job to go into escort work and after two weeks gave it up for cyberporn. Working with Amy, a 19-year-old photographer and web designer, she stars in, operates and owns her web site.

She told The Observer that she was earning $45,000 a year. "My body is my asset and it is logical to exploit it," she said.

"I'm selling it just like Dr Podlas sells her brainpower. This way I have control: they look but they don't touch."

Not all webmistresses are motivated by money. When advertising executive Kelly Jacobs wired her West Midlands flat with $23,000 of camcorders, she declared having thousands of strangers view her nude antics around her home everyday was fun.

Her web site, Babe TV, which costs subscribers $13 a month, immediately started pulling in $6,000 a month from viewers watching a series of new still images transmitted every 30 seconds.

"Babe TV is not pornography," she said.

"It is tastefully done, and very classy. And I really enjoy it."

According to Podlas the rise of the webmistress has happened in the last two years. "If the numbers of women continue to increase at this rate we will very soon see men barely represented in this industry," she adds.

It is all a radical change for pornography — once described by porn star Mimi Miyagi as "so male-dominated it is almost impossible for a woman to have any control."

Whoever is the porn merchant, sex undoubtedly sells and we may be seeing the tip of the iceberg on just how much cybersex can earn. It has an added advantage in the Internet marketplace in that people are more keen to shop for it online than to be seen ducking into a sex shop.

Danni Ashe was one of the first cyberporn millionairesses. A soft-core star, her Dannivision site was among the world's first to exploit new technology allowing porn to move away from static images to live film clips.

Her entrepreneurial spirit means she is perhaps the richest webmistress of all: last year her empire of online adult entertainment earned her (pounds sterling) 5 million.

Another American porn star, Annie Sprinkle, who was in the UK recently to promote her new film about the industry, said she believed feminism was now pro-porn. "We are winning the war that says the answer to bad pornography is no pornography. That's not right and more and more feminists are agreeing with that. The solution is for women to make better porn."

Podlas believes the webmistress is here to stay. "Pornography has been described as a man's boot on a woman's neck," she said.

"The shoe may now be on the other foot."

— By special arrangement with The Guardian

Success and being nice don't mix

Successful people are egotistical, stubborn and disagreeable. A report on the findings which are bad news for those who believe the meek shall inherit the earth. 

If you want to get ahead, be egotistical, stubborn and disagreeable. And a bit of untidiness will help too.

At work, look out for the people with the messy desks and the reputation for being underhand and manipulative, the bullying boss who never listens to your advice, and the colleague who tells blatant lies. They are the ones destined to triumph.

These are the findings of an in-depth exploration of greatness which reveals that a person's personality type is a clear indicator of success.

The research, presented recently to the American Psychological Association conference in Washington, examined the traits of the most successful men in US history — all 41 Presidents — and compared hem to more average individuals.

The truth, according to Texas academic Dr Steven Rubenzer and colleagues from the University of Minnesota, is that being nice gets you nowhere — not to the White House or Number 10 or even on to a parish council.

The researchers discovered that the great Presidents were low on straightforwardness, vulnerability and order.

"The very characteristics which mark people out as an unattractive choice as a spouse or a neighbour make them successful as leaders," said Rubenzer.

"One real surprise was that people who are a little disorganised do a bit better. Abraham Lincoln was notoriously untidy, and it certainly seems to be an asset."

The psychologists asked 100 biographers and historians to help them fill in questionnaires and then scored them on 592 different characteristics.

Forcefulness, the willingness to flatter and manipulate, egotism and assertiveness all seemed to help push Presidents up the ladder of greatness.

Rubenzer and his team believe the same applies to success in every walk of life. The completed personality profiles showed strong links between the characters of the great, and common traits among the bad.

"As far as the UK goes, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher fit right into our model. Stubborn, assertive and socially often obnoxious — just the right stuff to make them great figures in history.

"This research can equally be applied as a measure of who will succeed in the world of business and the workplace," said Rubenzer.

The team further categorised the Presidents into eight personality types — innocents, autocrats, good guys, introverts, actors, philosophers, extroverts and maintainers.

"As far as leaders go, the innocents definitely fare the worst," said Rubenzer.

"John Major we would categorise as an "innocent" — in other words he isn't going to get a lot of space in the history book."

Happily for Tony Blair, Rubenzer has not amassed enough information to rate him in the success stakes, but he may be interested to know that, whatever his personality traits are, the reality cannot be hidden.

"Spin doctors can't help on this one," said Rubenzer. "You can fake your personality for a while, but it is too much of a strain to keep it up for any length of time.

"The truth will out, especially in our late forties and fifties. There is no way we can suppress our natural personality. It is too ingrained."

The findings are good news for President Bill Clinton who will leave the White House in a few months' time, owing more than he may think to a certain intern. His affair with Monica Lewinsky was just what he needed to tip him the history books. Rubenzer says sexual misbehaviour has no effect on the measure of greatness, while bending the truth takes Clinton up there with the great and the not so good.

Tired and stressed workers earn more

New research suggests that there is a correlation between sleeping less than six hours each night and depression, and success. What's all the more surprising is that success is also correlated with heavy smoking and drug and alcohol abuse.

Feeling miserable? No friends? Can't sleep? Cheer up: you are much more likely to be rich and successful.

Pscyhologists have reported that workers who sleep for less than six hours a night and are prone to black moods earn more than their relaxed colleagues.

At the annual conference of the American Psychological Association in Washington, Dr John Lewis told how his study of Wall Street stockbrokers showed there was a direct link between abnormally high levels of stress and the amount of money people made.

It was all the more surprising as the workers were more likely to be abusing alcohol and drugs and smoking an average of 40 cigarettes a day.

He said: "In essence, these rookie brokers appear to be paying for financial success with their mental health and quality of life." He said it was "astounding" that, despite high levels of "job burn-out, clinical depression, moderate to high levels of anxiety, stress-induced deterioration of physical health and maladaptive coping skills," the workers were raking in six-figure salaries.

"Even more surprising was the fact that those brokers who reported greater impairment regarding depression, anxiety and emotional exhaustion, as well as poorer coping skills, proved to be the most successful individuals in our sample," said Lewis.

All the stockbrokers Lewis and his colleagues interviewed were male with an average age of 26 and were fairly new recruits in some of America's most prestigious brokerage houses.

Their emotional and psychological conditions were measured using standard tests and questionnaires.

Lewis found that the more money a broker made, the less he slept at night. On average they got less than six hours of sleep and took twice as long as normal — 37 minutes — to fall asleep once they were in bed.

Previous psychological studies have shown that people who sleep less tend to ignore other aspects of their health and this proved true for these men who were an unhealthy bunch suffering from flu or a virus on average four times a year.

But generally they would stumble into the office, too afraid to take a day off sick, where they would spend between 10 and 12 hours a day. A startling 61 per cent were depressed compared to a national general population average of 7 per cent.

Superstition linked to lower IQ

Superstition can be linked to lower IQ rates and poorer exam performance. But belief in UFOs is the exception often linked with coming top of the class.

NO matter whether you are Pisces, Virgo or Cancer, the warning for this week is the same for every astrological sign — poring over your horoscope can damage your mental health.

If you take star signs too seriously or if you worry unduly about walking under a ladder, you are actually stunting your intelligence and making yourself depressed.

Psychologists have discovered a strong link between belief in superstition and poor exam performance in academics.

They also found that those students who took account of black cats and Friday the 13th were far more likely to be neurotic and depressed and with a lower IQ than their more sceptical counterparts.

But the one exception was even more out of this world. If you ignore all the other phenomenon but believe in UFOs, then go to the top of the class.

A healthy dose of open-mindedness to the existence of extra-terrestrials means you are more likely to be of a higher intelligence.

The team of researchers led by Dr Michael Sonntag of the University of Lander in Greenwood, South Carolina, devised a scoring test to question people about their reactions to a range of superstitions including witchcraft, premonition, ghosts and astrology.

Presenting the group's finding to the annual conference of the American

Psychological Association in Washington this week-end, Sonntag said beliefs were more prevalent among students in the humanities, arts, teacher training and business studies while those who had chosen mathematics and sciences were far more likely to dismiss them.

Sonntag also suggested that the growing tendency towards horoscopes and belief in the paranormal in Western society could mean that the higher education system was failing people in not managing to make children "capable of critical analysis of information."

"The results generally support the stereotype that belief in the paranormal is associated with poorer academic performance," said Sonntag.

"In particular, belief in the most simple of superstitions such as black cats, broken mirrors and the number 13 were found to be related to the lowest intelligence scores."

From both his research and after assessing previous research done on similar topics, Sonntag concluded that "superstitious behaviour appears to be associated with a host of socially less favourable attributes such as neuroticism, depression and lower intelligence."

Next time you feel the need to check your horoscope, resist: it may only bring you bad luck.

Coping with jet lag
by Robin Mckie

Consider the cicada. These centimetre-long grubs spend their lives happily squirming through the soil of much of North East America. Then, after 17 years of blissful underground existence, they emerge in swarms, fly into the air, mate and lay eggs.

It sounds a bit like a holiday in Ibiza.

Nevertheless, the behaviour of Magicicada septendecim is startling for one particular feature: each member of each grub community knows exactly when to pop out of the ground so they all appear in unison. Some internal clock rings a biochemical bell, and all at once thousands of cicadas simultaneously spiral up to perform their version of the Mystery Dance.

These antics, although fascinating, may seem unconnected with the business of surviving the rigours of long-distance travel. Yet they are linked, as is revealed at the London Natural History Museum's new exhibition, Rhythms of Life, for it turns out that human beings, like other forms of life, have their own behaviour-regulating internal clocks.

''Every animal or plant has some biochemical control system that acts as an internal biological clock," said exhibition co-ordinator Paul Bowers. "In the case of the cicada, it produces no discernible behavioural changes for 17 years, and then suddenly everything changes at once. However, in other creatures — including humans — their influence on behaviour is constant and pervasive."

In fact, humans have many different biological clocks, the four most important being those that regulate our immune system, digestion, appetite and sleep. "If you fly to Hong Kong, which is eight hours in front of us, all four of these clocks are disrupted, and each tries to reset itself," says Bowers. "Some clocks try to go forward eight hours, others try to go back 16 hours. The end result is biological mayhem, which we experience as jet lag."

Not that we are unique in suffering such misery. Most mammals seem to experience some form of jet leg.

But if we understand the causes of jet lag, does that help us prevent it, or at least minimise its effects? In short, what can we do to fight its effects? The answer, says Bower, is quite a lot.

First, you should try to adapt to the time zone you are travelling to as soon as possible. Don't wait until you get on your plane. Start making adjustments — meals or naps — before you leave home for the airport. "Then when you get on to the plane, lay off the alcohol," says Bowers. "It's a depressant and it will simply make you feel lousy.' However, you can take drugs, he says — in particular, coffee, which will keep you awake when your body tries to persuade you to nod off at inappropriate times.

“Humans have two programmed sleep signals: the main one is switched on at night; the second, lighter one comes on in the early afternoon. We are actually programmed to take naps, in other words. And that can be dangerous when you first arrive in a new time zone. It can make you drowsy just when you have to stay awake." So take lots of coffee, particularly during the first two days of your trip. It should be taken only on the evening before you leave.

“There is also a great deal of variation among people when it comes to biological clocks. Some people naturally swing to a day that is slightly more than 24 hours long, some to one that is less than 24 hours. The former are owls; they tend to stay up late at night. The latter are larks; they get up early in the morning.

Profile
by Harihar Swarup
New BJP chief has no mass base

THE newly elected BJP President, Bangaru Laxman, is no Sushma Swaraj but he too was pushed to contest against former Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao in the Nandyal byelection in 1992 almost in the same way as Sushma was pitted against Sonia Gandhi last year from Bellary. In somewhat identical fashion, Laxman was railroaded to Rajasthan to oppose Buta Singh in Jalore constituency in 1999 mid-term poll as Sushma was forced to replace Sahib Singh Verma as Delhi’s Chief Minister and was expected to pull off a miracle in the Assembly election. Neither Laxman nor Sushma could perform a miracle. Possibly, as a reward, Laxman was brought to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 1996 even though he belongs to Andhra Pradesh. While the little known Bangaru Laxman has now been kicked up the ladder to the top slot in the ruling BJP, Sushma earned the sobriquet of the proverbial “sacrificial goat”.

No doubt, this is for the first time that the BJP, having the image of a “Bania-Brahmin” party, will have a Dalit President but devoid of a mass base and political clout as compared to his illustrious predecessors. Since the Jana Sangh was renamed the BJP following a split in the Janata party in the late seventies, it was headed by leaders like Atal Behari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Kushabhau Thakre. Now that the BJP is the ruling party at the centre, the presumption was that it would draft a senior partyman to lead the party but, proving all speculation wrong, the seniors sprang a surprise by picking up a lightweight. Bangaru Laxman, who sat in a rather obscure corner of Rail Bhavan, drew scant attention as Minister of State for Railways and hardly taken notice in Parliament, was pitchforked to the number one position in the organisation.

Before the choice fell on the 61-year-old Bangaru Laxman, it appeared almost certain that the suave, soft-spoken and mature, BJP Vice-President, Jana Krishnamurthy, would succeed Thakre. Many congratulated him too and he acknowledged the felicitation with a nod mixed with optimistic caution: “ let us see…..”. Like Laxman, Jana too has RSS background but he has a mind of his own, can think and assert if the situation so warrants. The comment of a senior BJP leader at the choice of Laxman is worth reproducing: “Strange are the ways of our senior leaders who can turn a dark horse into a bright star at the bat of an eyelid”.

Laxman may be a “dark horse” but his elevation to the top organisational post suits the senior leaders; almost all of them are now in the government and they will not like their decisions questioned at the party level. Going by past experience even Thakre had put his foot down on many occasions. The Prime Minister and his senior colleagues will now have a better grip over a party which had sometimes behaved in an obstinate manner. Though the step somewhat reflects the Congress culture, it suits the BJP given its present problems. A grateful Laxman is likely to dutifully follow the course chalked out by senior leaders. Nevertheless, his task is not going to be easy.

Immediately, he will have to concentrate in Uttar Pradesh where the party is on a downward slide and the Assembly elections are knocking at the door. One wonders how far his Dalit image will enable the BJP to halt allround erosion in the politically sensitive state. Also, this image may not help the party counter the onslaught of Kalyan Singh, also a Dalit with far more clout and a BJP renegade. Election are also due next year in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala. Laxman has now to negotiate critical poll alliances and prepare the party for the battle at the hustings.

Though Bangaru Laxman never came on the centrestage in his home state — Andhra Pradesh — he is an old-time law graduate of Hyderabad’s Osmania University and, among a very few in the state who have a life-long association with the RSS. He has also seen many ups and downs in life beginning his career as an employee of the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board as far back as 1958 and later changing over to Indian Railways. Life for a Dalit, howsoever educated he might be, was not easy in the fifties and sixties. He entered active political life as late as 1969, giving up his government job and plunging into trade union movement, a field that always attracted him.

The areas of his trade union activities had been BHEL, NFC, FCI and Singreni Collieries. Long years of trade union movement earned him rewards in 1985 and the BJP’s leadership sent him to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council and a year later appointed him President of the state unit of the BJP.

Immediately after taking over his priority will be U.P. and as he says: “ U.P. is on top of my agenda. We have taken note of the reverses suffered in the last Lok Sabha elections. Our effort will be to consolidate the existing base of the party among Dalits and backward communities”.

He attributes the problems of growing indiscipline to the growth of the organisation. “The party has attained power but not on its own strength alone. Yet the workers think power is the centre around which everything revolves. Workers want something from the government but the party is not in a position to give it”.

The importance of Mori’s visit
By P. Jayaram

JAPANESE Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s upcoming India visit will be watched more for the signals he will leave, particularly for his country’s business community, rather than any change in Tokyo’s known position on contentious issues that had marred bilateral relations in recent years.

By choosing to visit Bangalore first, rather than the Indian capital, he has already sent out one signal — about India’s emerging reputation as an information technology (IT) powerhouse.

Mori, the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit India in more than a decade, apparently wants to signal Tokyo’s recognition of the great strides India has made in the IT sector, particularly in software technology. Observers noted that while Japan is strong in the hardware sector, it wants to benefit from the tremendous progress this country has made in software.

His visit also may revive Japan’s interest in Bangalore, where it had earlier plans to set up a satellite township in suburban Bidadi. It was dropped some years ago following protests from local farmers.

Mori, who arrives in Bangalore on August 21, will address a business meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and visit some leading IT firms the next day, besides calling on Chief Minister S.M. Krishna, who is rolling out the red carpet to receive the distinguished visitor.

One clear signal of revived Japanese interest in India would be if a proposed visit by a high-power Japanese business delegation takes place in November, the source said.

Japanese companies are said to be pressing the Government to restore aid to India, suspended following New Delhi’s nuclear tests in May, 1998. Some of the big companies, which were involved in the implementation of major aid projects in the country, were on the threshold of making considerable investments here when the diplomatic fallout of the nuclear tests led to a deep chill in bilateral ties.

Japanese business and the Government also realise that there are few countries like India that can absorb the kind of assistance given by Tokyo. Since the November 1985 visit of then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to Tokyo, there had been a quantum jump in Japanese aid to India.

The visit of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to Japan last year and that of Defence Minister George Fernandes early this year had largely helped put bilateral ties back on track.

“I think the Japanese are trying to restore their earlier dominance in South Aisa in economic terms,” an official said, noting that Mori had included Bangladesh too, besides India and Pakistan, in his itinerary in the region.

Considerable preparations, including a lot of Track-II diplomacy through non-official channels had gone in before Mori’s visit was announced, according to strategic affairs analyst and Japan expert Subash Kapila.

K.V. Kesavan, Director of Japan Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi said Mori’s visit should be seen as part of the confidence-building measures between the two countries after bilateral relations were soured by the acrimony over India’s nuclear tests.

He said while the visit itself was a good development from the point of view of bilateral relations, he did not expect any change in Tokyo’s position on fundamental issues like nuclear non-proliferation. “Mori’s political position back home is very weak and the visit will help project his image back home,” he added.

Besides holding talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mori, who arrives in New Delhi on August 23, will also call on President K.R. Narayanan, Vice- President Krishan Kant and meet other Indian dignitaries.

— India Abroad News Service

Delhi durbar
Sartorial politics

THE dress one wears is often indicative of one’s state of mind. In our country particularly, certain category of dresses have come to be identified with the political class and BJP leader Madan Lal Khurana is not an exception to it. Of late, the former Delhi Chief Minister and once a Union Cabinet Minister is being seen donning kurta pyjama of white khaddar, abandoning his safari suit. A scribe remarked that ‘Maddi Ustad’, as he is known among some of his friends, is not only in a rebellious state of mind but is also trying to emerge as the focus of dissidence within the ruling party. He compared him with former Prime Minister V.P. Singh’s days in the Congress around 1986-87. Whenever, the rebel in the Raja of Manda came to the fore, he used to abandon his sherwani and churidar pyjama and used to put on his kurta pyjama. Incidentally, both Khurana and V.P. Singh had their initial political lessons at Allahabad University. Will Khurana do a V.P. Singh on the BJP?

Sparring friends

Congress MP Mani Shankar Aiyar is known for his acerbic tongue. And, he was at his rhetoric best while putting forward his party’s views on disinvestment in the Lok Sabha. He said disinvestment was a crucial issue for the Government and that is why the Prime Minister had made two of his brightest colleagues — Arun Jaitley and Arun Shourie — in charge of the department.

He, however, negated the compliment by first charging “King Arun l (Jaitley)” for implementing an ad hoc policy and then attacked “King Arun II (Shourie)” with confusing the apples with the oranges. Aiyar went on to add that the Government had folded up the Disinvestment Commission more than nine months ago, and this period was sufficient to produce a baby. However, the “impotent” Government could not even come out with a policy in so many months.

Aiyar’s other attacks were directed towards Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, who served in a similar capacity in the Chandra Shekhar Government. He said Sinha was a chameleon Finance Minister and Sinha’s fatwas on disinvestment were in fact “sinful” fatwas.

At one point when Arun Shourie objected to the Congress member linking him to an industrial house, Aiyar told the Minister that he was the most honest Minister and therefore the “dumbest”. He also charged the Minister of going to some “ghastly” university in the sixties where he was taught not have faith in socialism.

Congress flag-bearers

The Opposition, specially the Congress which has greater numbers than those in the Treasury Benches in the Rajya Sabha, has four flag-bearers, or strategy makers in the House.

The four — Mr Manmohan Singh, Leader of the Opposition, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, Chief Whip of the Congress Party in the Rajya Sabha, Mr Kapil Sibal, the eminent lawyer and one who raises technical points, and Mr Suresh Pachauri, one who cannot be shouted down — are always the first ones to raise issues and also those which put the Government in embarrassing spots.

In the recent past the four have had innumerable occasions to put the NDA alliance in the dock and they have not lost the opportunity even once. On one occasion Mr Pranab Mukherjee even forced the Government to agree to an impromptu discussion on the prevailing situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Interestingly, the four members don’t work individually and they seem to work in tandem. Before raising any important issue the four MPs just get up from their allotted seats, bow down to the Chair, walk out from different gates and go missing from the House for about five minutes.

They then return one by one to occupy their seats and then sometime later raise issues together to put the Government in embarrassing situations. It is only after the four are on their seats that the others from the Congress Party and even from the other Opposition parties join in to push the Government on the back foot.

Samata’s agony

The Samata Party’s Lok Sabha MP, Mr Prabhu Nath Singh, is always more than eager to express his views in the House. According to his admirers, the Samata Party MP strongly believes that his performance in Parliament would get him a berth in the Union Cabinet and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee would prefer him over his party colleague Raghunath Jha. But his enthusiasm to speak on every single issue is not being taken very kindly by the Lok Sabha Speaker, G.M.C. Balayogi, who has been trying to bring some semblance of order in the lower House.

The other day the Speaker tried his best to make Prabhu Nath Singh cut short his speech but, when several reminders failed to make him yield, Balayogi had to order his staff that nothing would go on record. This had the required affect.

Who is impressing whom?

The debate over the killing of more than 100 people in Kashmir had the members’ temper running high in the Lok Sabha last week. It saw Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan drawn into a verbal duel with the members from the Congress Party. Mr Mahajan’s insistence that the Government could not hold any inquiry of public order in Jammu and Kashmir had Priya Ranjan Das Munshi on his feet who demanded to know the interpretation of public order.

While Mahajan admitted that he did not know the law as much as Munshi, the Congress leader went on to explain that it was not pickpocketing, not burglary or for that matter robbery. Madhav Rao Scindia intervened to say that it was not public order but destabilisation of the Union.

At one point, Scindia said the Minister was only trying to impress the House with his speech. Capitalising on the presence of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s presence in the House, the Minister retorted he knew who was trying to impress whom. A voice from the floor said it was not impressing but depressing.

Brigand help for women!

Notorious sandalwood smuggler Veerappan’s dictats to the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and their surprising eagerness to meet his demands could literally bring the forest brigand to centrestage.

A former CPM MP from Kanpur, Ms Subhasini Ali, who is a strong votary of 33 per cent reservation for women, is getting ideas from Veerappan’s errant ways. Why not write to the Tamil Robin Hood to come to the rescue of women? she asked this diarist. He should definitely be able to get the women their rightful due.

(Contributed by TRR, Satish Misra, T.V. Lakshminarayan, Girija Shankar Kaura and P.N. Andley)