Outlook – July 06, 2019

THE SUBCONTINENTAL MENU

IN & AROUND

CHUK CHUK SUBSIDY

T

RAIN tickets in India always

come with an edifying mes-

sage: “Indian Railways recovers

only 57 per cent of cost of travel

on an average”. How munificent

of our great national institution!

Now it plans to recover the rest

through a novel scheme—it has

proposed giving travellers the

option of buying a ticket at the

non-subsidised price. The depart-

ment is still awaiting the assent

of the Prime Minister’s Office on

the proposal, which is reminiscent

of the Give It Up campaign, where

people were encouraged to forgo

subsidies on gas cylinders. One

wonders though what a couple

of hundreds rupees extra per

passenger will do for the Railways’

annual loss of Rs 32,000 crore.

HOME FRUIT HOME

A

RE you a Malayali who

just returned from the

‘Gelf’ and want to build your

dream home in Kodungallur?

The municipality has

introduced a rule for you—

owners of all new buildings

with a floor area and plot size

of at least 1,500 sq ft and

3,485 sq ft respectively must

exercise their green thumbs

and plant two fruit trees. “No

one has protested so far,”

says the optimistic municipal

secretary T.K. Sujith, who

concedes that people could

challenge the order in courts.

We’ll wait and see how

fruitful this move will be.

A DRUNKARD’S WET

DREAM

D

EVDAS should have been born

in Coimbatore. Many bars run

by the Tamil Nadu State Marketing

Corporation (TASMAC) in the city

are offering incredible deals to

their loyal customers. Along with a

‘quarter’, they give complimentary

servings of breakfast items such

as dosa, idli, upma and pongal as

well as leftover chicken, chickpeas

and other munchies. Some bars

also offer canned water and plastic

cups for free—a generous gesture,

considering the abject water

scarcity in the state. But as with

all things that sound too good to

be true, there’s a catch. The offer is

valid only early in the morning and

late in the night—technically illegal,

since the bars’ official timings are

12 pm to 10 pm. So the next time

you feel like a Daniel’s at dawn, you

know where to go.

8 OUTLOOK 8 July 2019

S

AMAJWADI Party patriarch

Mulayam Singh Yadav is a

relieved man, vindicated that his

advice to son Akhilesh against

any mahagathbandhan with ‘bua’

Mayawati would backfire. The SP

won just five seats and, like Netaji

had predicted, Mayawati dumped

his son soon after increasing her

tally from zero in the previous

Lok Sabha to 10 this time. She

blamed the partner party for the

mahagathbandhan’s failure. As

for Mulayam—the 79-year-old

is in the Lok Sabha for a seventh

term from Mainpuri—he has

been devastatingly prophetic

before as well. In 2017, he told

Akhilesh to stay away from Rahul

Gandhi’s Congress during the

Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

The drubbings could open the

door for Mulayam to reclaim

control of his party.

HEED A PATRIARCH’S ADVICE

Illustrations by SAAHIL; Text curated by PUNEET NICHOLAS YADAV, JYOTIKA SOOD and ALKA GUPTA