Annual 2009 Salty Blog awards

The annual 2009 Saltyblog Awards for significant contribution to the country in each of the following fields (sorted alphabetically) are here:

Best Bureaucrat : RS Pandey, petroleum secretary for helping natural gas production to reach 60 million units at a price that is 2.5 times more rewarding to the private explorer than the originally agreement drawn between the feuding Ambani brothers.

Best Corporate Chairman : Ramalingam Raju for taking the lead in demonstrating to 50000 employees that admission of guilt is the best policy in a hopeless situation & also for his patriotic preference to being caged in Indian jails (possibly for for a few years) instead of spending the rest of his life in a firangi American Jail.

Best Economist : Amartya Sen. For discarding the subject of economics to write a book on philosophy of justice & vaguely hinting through his example of "3 flutes" that distributive justice is better achieved if the seats in the best institutions of learning are reserved for the socially deprived rather than academically meritorious.

Best Eligible Bachelor: Rahul Gandhi , for the second time in a row. For hinting, by his continued absence from ministerial politics & his habit of gatecrashing in any rural home for dinner, his unfulfilled desire of a permanent "home" minister who can also cook him great meals.

Best Engineer(s) : From Delhi Metro , who demonstrated to the national media how to dislodge a 200 ton steel girder sitting on crumbling pillars & then how to fail in lifting the girder with the help of three cranes of varying cable strengths & finally how to save ones' backside by passing the blame onto the contractors .

Best Friends: The Sainiks of Maharashtra who decided to part ways before the elections to be under two brothers & for repeatedly demonstrating , albeit separately, to the entire nation their fondness for their common hobbies of Marathi chauvinism & north-Indian bashing.

Best Marketing Manager: The Indian cellular industry jointly. For reaching a record subscriber base of 0.5 billion & for helping to partially overturn the infamous quote of the Emergency era : "Work More, Talk Less."

Best Politican : Dr. Manmohan Singh , for the second time in a row, for leading his party for a second term in the Loksabha elections as well as for hinting in his comment , "I am an extinguished economist, not a distinguished one,(any more)" his probable preference for political compliments.

Best Sportsman : Mamata Bannerjee, chief of Trinamool Congress for emerging victorious in the panchayat, Lok Sabha, municipality, assembly by elections & raising some semblance of hope in nearly three decades among the politicised, poverty-ridden, unemployed, unenterprising, educated & violent residents of both rural & urban West Bengal. Kind of the champion of T20, ODI & Test match variety of Bengal electoral politics.