Media is the message

Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister of communications and information technology, was stumped to see the conference room at Sanchar Bhawan chock-a-block with cameramen and journalists when he arrived to brief the media on the issue of call drops recently. While he looked puzzled initially - extra chairs had to be arranged for the minister and officials of the telecom ministry - he regained his composure in no time and retorted "it's the issue I guess". At the conference, he ordered a special audit of the networks of mobile operators and said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had been asked to formulate a system of "incentives and disincentives" for their service quality.