As part of an ongoing modernization and reform campaign, HRD Minister Mr. Kapil Sibal announced plans to scrap the second law of thermodynamics. The second law states the principle of entropy, in which a system continually degrades over time due to increasing levels of disorder.

“We Indians are sick and tired of our system breaking down all the time,’ said Mr. Sibal. “The second law of thermodynamics is responsible for this. It stands in the way of progress. And, it must go,” he thundered.

The announcement followed recommendations of a Group of Ministers convened to identify pesky laws of science and nature that they wanted to see abolished. “There was clear consensus that the principle of entropy is a real nuisance. It’s been there since the beginning of time. It’s outdated. Enough is enough. We’ve never played by the rules of nature. Now we’re officially scrapping it,” said Mr Sibal, before going on to promise the ‘biggest shake-up to the laws of physics since Isaac Newton’. “It’s possible that we might re-introduce the second law along the lines of ‘things will only get better‘,” he clarified.

The HRD minister’s announcement was welcomed enthusiastically by the Prime Minister, Mr. Manmohan Singh who said, “Our style is to fly in the face of common sense and laws. It’s time that we embraced this approach openly. I’ve asked the team to abolish fundamental laws and concepts from economics as well. Many in the cabinet have expressed annoyance with the law of supply and demand, and concepts such as fair market pricing and auctions. Speaking of time, we plan to ban the concept of time itself by 2014, so we can scrap the elections that year.”

In other news

Greece shocked to learn that it is now owned by Suresh Kalmadi. Yesterday, Greek citizens woke up to the fact that their country is now owned by a little known politician from India named Suresh Kalmadi. No one knows yet as to how this heist was pulled off. The entire narrative is expected to unfold over the next three years.

Studies performed by researchers have revealed a deep sense of dissatisfaction among teachers at the quality of homework being done by parents on behalf of their children. “It’s shocking how low the standards have fallen. We often find these poor children hastily re-doing botched attempts by parents, before submitting them.”

Gloom and panic seize fans. Publishers fear this could be the last nail in India’s literary coffin.

Renowned author, Chetan Bhagat, today admitted that he did not know what to write about anymore. “I’ve exhausted all the mundanely commercial possibilities that one can write about. I’ve written about college, working in call centers and getting married. Recently, I even tried writing a non-fictional book.” Bhagat’s latest book “What Young India wants” has met with withering criticism, with the phrase “horse dung” occurring repeatedly in reviews. When asked, Bhagat responded, “Horse manure is, in a sense, hovering all around us, waiting to invade our consciousness. It takes a certain type of mind to get hold of it and inject it into the public consciousness under the right sociological conditions. If you look at it thus, my book is a highly creative effort. But, truth be told, there’s only so much of horse excreta going around. Dude, I’m now at the deep end of the pool and have nowhere left to go.”

This announcement was met with widespread dismay and panic by Bhagat’s millions of fans on Facebook. “What am I now supposed to buy when I’m looking for a ridiculously watered down read for less than a hundred rupees?,” posted a fan, which immediately received over a hundred thousand likes on the social network. A top publisher, under the condition of anonymity, revealed that she was in discussions with Bhagat on his next book. “More than Chetan, we publishers know what young India wants. They need more horse dung. So, we’ve asked Chetan to compile all the fan posts on his Facebook page into a book, which can then be sold back to the fans. We will be trying very hard to push our luck as far as humanly possible,” she added.

The What Ho! report: Headlines, baseless rumors and no news whatsoever. We read the Times of India so you shouldn’t have to.

Following a daylong meeting spent huddling with his Cabinet colleagues and coalition partners, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced today that “the best bet for Indian people was to follow the dictum laid out in the Bhagavad Gita”. “Listen, just do your duty. And, give up all your expectations,”, said Singh, “This is the great truth that has been handed down to us over the ages,” adding that there was no point in trying to introduce new bills when “no one really cares about making anything work.” When pressed for more details, Singh added, “If you love something, set it free. Don’t spend all your energy in trying to force something to work. Your government should be free to do its own thing. If it never comes back to thinking about you, perhaps we are not meant to be with each together.” The Prime Minister confirmed that he’s “pretty sure” that his government will not get anything done for another two years and maybe even longer. However, he urged Indians to “keep their minds open to the possibility of a miracle.”

The What Ho! report: Headlines, baseless rumors and no news whatsoever. We read the Times of India so you shouldn’t have to.

Our new home minister, Mr. Sushil Kumar Shinde, dropped by last week and gave what can only be described as his most candid interview till date.

Q: Mr. Shinde, congrats on your promotion. What do you think is your biggest challenge as Home Minister?

Sushil Kumar Shinde: The biggest challenge is to defend our borders. I recently stumbled upon a world map. Every country seems to have a border. I don’t know if you guys realize this. It’s very, very hard to defend yourself when you have borders.

Q: That’s so insightful! Why is it hard to defend our borders?

Sushil Kumar Shinde: Defending borders is not easy because you tend to have foreign countries on the other side of the border. And they’re always trying to move the border when you’re not looking. For example, I noticed that there are foreign countries in the North East on the other side of our border.

Q: You’ve said that you were an excellent Power Minister. Would you like to add to that?

Sushil Kumar Shinde: Yes. Here’s the deal. Superman is gone. No one knows where he is any more. Even Batman has been retired by Chris Nolan. I may be the only fictional super hero left. Being a super hero is no filmy matter, mind you!

Q: Mr. Shinde, how do you plan to combat terrorism? 

Sushil Kumar Shinde: The biggest problem with terrorists today is that we don’t know where they are. So, I plan to issue ID cards to all terrorists when they enter India. This will make it easier to track them. We’ll also have a pool of “immediately available suspects,” who can be arrested within 48 hours of any incident, in case we’re not able to track down the terrorists.

Q: Sir, comedians and satirists were worried when Abhishek Manu Singhvi retired from the public scene. But, God works in mysterious ways. He has given you to us. We sincerely hope that people will appreciate your genius some day. Many thanks for speaking with us.

In a separate statement, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh revealed that he considers the appointment of Mr. Shinde as the Home Minister as “a harmless prank that has gone too far.”

The What Ho! report: Satire, baseless rumors and no real news whatsoever. We read the Times of India so you shouldn’t have to.

Flush from its victory in the recent civic polls, the West Bengal state government, led by the feisty Mamata “Didi” Banerjee, is mulling a complete ban on electricity and bathing. The strongly pro-poor Didi said, “Hey, if something’s not being used by lesser privileged people in society, it ought to be illegal. We looked around in slums and found that people over there don’t have access to electric power and are not in a position to have daily showers. Hence, we’re planning to ban these items.” When queried on the practicality of implementing such a ban, Didi reassured reporters by saying, “Of course, the ban will not be total. We’ll still need electricity to torture cartoonists.”

In a bid to come out of financial doldrums, Kingfisher Airlines announced that it would convert itself into a social network.  The new entity, which will be called “facepalmbook”, will soon announce an IPO from which it expects to raise tens of billions of dollars. “For the last several months, we’ve delayed and cancelled flights thus causing customers to waste enormous amounts of time at airports. With this new social network, we expect to help them waste time at home, without ever having to visit an airport,” said the flamboyant Vijay Mallya who plans to hand over reins of the new entity to his son, Sid.

“In this new structure, employees will cease to be employees and instead become our ‘friends’ on facepalmbook. This way, they won’t receive salaries, but can grow as much food as they want on imaginary farms. Plus, we’re going to keep all the cool things about Kingfisher, such as in-flight entertainment, gourmet meals and glamorous stewardesses. We’re dropping only those things that have hurt us over the years, namely customers.”, chipped in Sid helpfully.

As Syria descended into chaos and UN inspectors foraged for signs of carnage in villages, India’s Sachin Tendulkar called on the Syrian president, Bashar Assad to stand firm and not step down. “I don’t believe you can tell someone when they ought to retire or step down. They should be allowed to leave on their own terms when the time comes”, he asserted. When asked about polls which point to Assad’s plummeting popularity, Tendulkar remarked, “Numbers aren’t everything. As long as Assad continues to be passionate about genocide and vendetta, he ought to keep going.” In response, Kapil Dev called on the entire United Nations organization as well as Syrian rebels to retire immediately.

In an innovative and radical twist, which promises to generate more controversy, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has called for combining even larger groups of examinations into one. “First, we combined all other engineering examinations with IIT-JEE. Now, we’ll take this a  major step further by combining this with all other exams such as eye exams, hearing tests, blood tests, driver’s license tests and colonoscopy into one mother of all unified exams (MOAUE). My fond hope for Indians is that any person should be able to take just MOAUE and be able to come out with spectacles, hearing aids, blood group type, driver’s license, a bowel movement patterns report as well as admission to a college at the end of it.”

The What Ho! report: Headlines, baseless rumors and no news whatsoever. We read the Times of India so you shouldn’t have to