Power pat

Rarely does India’s laggard power sector get a pat on the back. So it amused the members in Lok Sabha when Pranab Mukherjee, in his reply to the Budget debate, praised Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde for putting on a good show. Mukherjee said: “We hope to add 15,000 Mw by the end of the current financial year, and I congratulate my colleague, the power minister (Sushil Kumar Shinde), because more often than not I used to criticise him that his projects were going slow, and he has correctly responded to that.”