Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren has a lot of reading to do

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JMM leader and former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren | PTI

Hemant Soren’s library plans get a push from Ratan Tata and others

New Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren collected enough reading material on the day of his swearing-in last week to start a library.

Prominent politicians and eminent personalities from different walks of life brought him an assortment of books ranging from For the love of India: The life and Times of Jamsetji Tata to Good Economics for Hard Times by Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. A guest gifted Gurcharan Das’ The Difficulty of Being Good.

Former Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata gifted the book on Jamsetji. Tata could not make it to the event but his team visited Soren the next day with a box of books. IAS officer Uma Shankar Singh, a director in the Jharkhand education department, gave another Banerjee book, Poor Economics, to the CM. Among the gifts were also over a dozen books on tribal history and culture, the Constitution of India and India’s Independence movement.

The unusual choice of gift wasn’t a coincidence. Before the swearing-in ceremony, Soren had posted a message on Twitter, requesting people to give him books instead of the usual bouquets of flowers. Soren said he felt bad when he could not take care of the flowers given to him. The chief minister also said he plans to open libraries in every district of the state, where he will keep the books so that people of the state can benefit.

The idea of requesting for books instead of bouquets reportedly came from one of Soren’s close aides. While campaigning for elections, Soren had visited Deoghar and was very impressed with a library set up with donated books. The library is open to all and is well-maintained. Soren had then expressed a desire to start similar libraries in every district of Jharkhand if he came to power.

A lesson on India’s secular fabric in US envoy’s Twitter photo

US Ambassador to India Kenneth Juster has turned out to be an envoy with a difference. Unlike most envoys who keep themselves to diplomatic engagements in the host country, he has travelled extensively in India — from tourist places to religious destinations, exploring the country and engaging with various sections of the people.

His Twitter handle, updated recently, is a testimony to that. The cover photo of his profile showcases India’s rich cultural heritage and unity in diversity. It shows five religious places that the envoy has visited since 2018. In this compilation of five photos, one shows him carrying a chadar as offering at the Haji Ali mosque in Mumbai where he went in November 2018. In another frame, he is seen at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The other three frames show him doing Ganga Aarti in Haridwar in May last year, having a conversation with Father Patricio Fernandes at Bom Jesus Basilica in Goa in March 2019, and having a friendly banter with a monk at the exotic Nechung Monastery in Dharamsala (Himachal Pradesh) in May 2018. These pictures have got the diplomatic community in the national capital talking and also impressed Indian officials.

Modi’s key civil servant retires, says will work to help poor households

Among Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most trusted civil servants has been rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha, who retired in December. A 1983-batch officer, Sinha first joined the ministry as additional secretary. He had been at the forefront of handling key rural initiatives of the Modi government, especially the rural housing project, making him one of the most important civil servants in this government’s first term.

While several senior civil servants eye plum post-retirement positions, Sinha seems to have different plans. In a message sent to thank some of his contacts after he retired, Sinha categorically said he was clear he did not want to do anything except work in the social sector to help deprived households. The former IAS officer, however, did not elaborate any further on his plans.

(Contributors: Moushumi Das Gupta, Nayanima Basu and Ruhi Tewari)