Politicians, bureaucrats lose out to Katrina Kaif; rail babus get consolation

THE jury is out, and netas and babus are the combined losers. The netizens in India are not so excited about any politicians and bureaucrats though people in corridors of power are continuing to hog the limelight in electronic and print media across the country. According to annual list called “Zeitgeist 2010” based on the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed into Google this year, Lalit Modi, Katrina Kaif and Sachin Tendulkar are some of the fastest rising people in India whereas none of the bureaucrats or more so no politicians have figured in the list of top 10 fastest rising people or most popular keywords. The list brought out by Google captures the spirit of 2010 globally.

The only consolation prize, however, goes to the rail and tourism babus as the IRCTC (railway ticket booking) continues to top the charts of the year-on-year fastest rising keywords in India. The IRCTC is also one of the top 10 most popular keywords for Indian netizens alongside songs, gmail, google, nokia etc. The top five most popular brands in India, according to Zeitgeist 2010 list, are Nokia, Samsung, Airtel, Micromax

and Dell. In this season of scams, “how to bribe” has not figured in Top 10 most popular “how to”. Significantly, more Indians in 2010 googled “how to impress a girl” and “how to tie a tie” than “how to make money”.

Any clue about how many googled “babus”?

Action and Appointments

a) Indian Air Force (IAF) got a new batch of officers with 171 newly commissioned Flying Officers graduating from the Air Force Academy (AFA), at Dundigal near Hyderabad, on Saturday. Air Chief Marshal PV Naik reviewed the combined graduation parade and awarded President’s Commission to the graduating Flight Cadets that included 39 women Flight Cadets. Four Indian Navy officers and one Indian Coast Guard officer also received their flying brevet (Wings) at the graduation parade from the Air Chief.

b) A CID probe has been ordered to look into an alleged land-grab in Navi Mumbai by senior bureaucrats. A housing society that came into question has accommodated more than 20 IAS officers as members. According to the allegation, the bureaucrat-dominated housing society managed to get the piece of land just for Rs 4.43 crore against its market value of over Rs20 crore.