Malabar in Maharashtra

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was in his elements at the recent Malabar Gold and Diamond event.

The Chairman of the company MP Ahammed said the entire India has supported him like a family to grow the business across the country and promised to employ 4,000 people in the State. Fadnavis later said he can also be considered as part of Malabar family since he lives in Malabar Hills (the tony south Mumbai residential area) and urged him to reserve at least 50 per cent of jobs in the State for Maharashtrians.

Lost in pronunciation!

There is a demand in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district to rename the turmeric city “Erodu”.

The reason is in English, people often confuse it with the word “erode”.

This issue has some resonance among people of western Tamil Nadu.

A couple of years ago, the erstwhile AIADMK government came up with changes in the names of various cities and towns in the State before dropping them.

However, Erode never figured in it, lament those supporting Erodu!

Board for Chilli

A demand to set up a separate board for chilli is a long-standing one. Commodities such as coffee, tea, tobacco and rubber have a board to take care of the stakeholders’ interests.

Andhra Pradesh has been demanding the setting up of a chilli board in the State.

A proposal to shift the responsibility of supervising the functioning of these commodity boards to the Ministry of Agriculture has been pending for years now.

Kerala’ s money spinner

Kerala Finance Minister KN Balagopal was all praise for the State’s tourism industry for its contribution to the exchequer.

The rise in tourist flows — both domestic and foreign travellers — is mainly because of the change in the mind-set of people who are ready to travel to safe destination like Kerala, he noted and underlined the need for developing infrastructure.

Since the scope of attracting private investments is high, the Minister urged stakeholders in the sector to project topographical specialities of the State and organise expos and travel marts.

He also assured all government support for the tourism industry initiatives.

Bol Bachchan

This time it is the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) that is complaining to Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) about Bollywood Star Amitabh Bachchan and e-commerce major Flipkart for what it calls an utterly misleading advertisement of Flipkart. CAIT claims Bachchan’s reflections on traders were unfair.

CAIT National President BC Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said the advertisement will hurt the image of neighbourhood small shops and damage their livelihoods.

Both trade leaders said that recently the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has rolled out a policy stating what is deceptive & misleading advertisement.

The advertisement in question falls under the purview of CCPA as the advertisement has arguably flouted the policy laid down by the Ministry. Therefore, the CAIT is moving to CCPA for registering the complaint. Our Bureaus