Talking head

Jayanthi Natarajan, a Congress spokesperson before she got a ministerial post in Tuesday's cabinet reshuffle, has moved from television news studios to the environment ministry.

Most political observers have missed the significance of Ms Natarajan's previous job vis-a-vis her current remit — what she learnt in TV studios can be immensely useful to her.

Jairam Ramesh encouraged substantive debates, which made life difficult for UPA-II. Ms Natarajan should use the TV technique. Call all the stakeholders for a 30-minute meeting.

Industrialists, green activists, local representatives, experts, Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev, the two Bhushans (we are assuming some or all of last four would be keen to join the discussion) — all of them seated around a long table, Ms Natarajan presiding.

She makes an opening statement that sort of confuses all stakeholders and then invites their opinions, and soon after they start making their case passionately, she interrupts them, and while appearing to say something linked to the speaker's point makes a completely different point and invites another stakeholder to speak.

This will confuse matters further, especially since every speaker will be given the same treatment. To ensure complete confusion she should encourage plenty of cross-talk between the stakeholders, more than one of them speaking at the same time and, occasionally, she should join in.

Also, she must have at least two to three breaks during the meeting. This being the government, these would have to be non-commercial breaks — patriotic songs should play in these breaks.

At the end of the 26 minutes of talking, she can announce pretty much anything, no stakeholder will be in a position to object because no one will have any idea what they actually talked about.