NEW DELHI, 11 July — Former chief minister of the eastern state of Bihar and ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Laloo Prasad Yadav is now trying to up-date his image with the time. And it won’t be wrong to say that now he is a ‘modern’ man. Widely ridiculed for so far opposing the advancement of information technology (IT), Laloo has now started favoring it.
Laloo, who once dismissed “IT-YT” as being the realm of the elite and an unreal pursuit in an agrarian and largely unlettered country like India, has now blamed the media for leading people to believe he was against the IT sector. He yesterday announced that the international seminar on biotechnology and IT would be held in Patna on Nov. 25-26.
The state would host the event in collaboration with San Francisco-based IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE), the Confederation of Indian Industry, the IT Society of India and the Bihar Industries Association, Laloo said. While talking to reporters, he said, “The media wrongfully flashed the message that I was opposed to IT.”
He also informed that noted entrepreneurs and industrialists from India and abroad, including Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, Infosys Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy and US-based Kanwal Rekhi, as well as IT Minister Pramod Mahajan would be invited for the seminar, Laloo said. He announced about the seminar in the presence of his son-in-law Shailesh Kumar, who formerly worked with IT major Infosys.
But people are is skeptical about Laloo’s newfound love for the IT sector, with his critics alleging he was merely trying to “rehabilitate” his software professional son-in-law. “The seminar is an attempt to rehabilitate at the cost of the state’s expense his jobless son-in-law,” alleged Sushil Modi, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly.
