The Prime Minister's Question Hour

DELHI Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's press conference last week was a media event by itself. The last time a prime minister addressed a press conference in the capital was in 1998 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced the Pokhran nuclear test. While Manmohan had no such earth-shattering announcement to make, he still went ahead and met the media.

PICTURE SPEAK

BUSINESS AS USUAL: Manmohan

As is the nature of the prime minister the focus was on work more than rhetoric-economic issues rather than political agenda dominated the day. One reason for this was also that the master of ceremonies, the prime minister's press adviser and former editor of The Financial Express Sanjaya Baru, was more familiar with business journalists than political ones so the people he called upon to ask questions were mostly from business newspapers. And not unlike a corporate meeting, the rules of business were circulated before the interaction began. Each organisation was to be allowed only one question but like most rules these too were broken.

Though Manmohan sat alone on the dais, all the prime minister's men were in attendance. The entire PMO was present as were Congress party spokespersons and Information and Broadcasting Minister S. Jaipal Reddy. But unlike the BJP trio of I&B ministers-Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley-those from the Congress chose to maintain a low profile and stayed away from the limelight. In keeping with the prime minister's style, the histrionics were kept to a bare minimum. The press conference was more about information than broadcasting.

-By Priya Sahgal