REUTERS - Chandigarh, India - Yesterday afternoon, Anup Gupta, a prominent local farmer was arrested by local authorities on charges of "crimes against the environment" and "misuse of public lands". It seems the hapless Mr. Gupta had been taking a correspondence course from the India Institute of Management (IIM) and came across an internet article that recommended combining all of his hay into one "center field".
Being a stickler for exact interpretation of a rule, Mr. Gupta, who only has two hayfields, began piling his hay in a fallow bit of public land located between his to fields. Said Mr. Gupta "the article said a *center* field and that obviously means that I would need to have an odd number of fields to do this properly. Since I only have two fields, I had to make use of a third field belonging to the provincial agricultural extension office."
Previously Mr. Gupta had stored his hay into reasonably sized haystacks that were common to the region. However, when he piled all of his hay into one enormous stack, the hay in the center of the stack began to compost. Being summer time and excessively hot and dry, the heat from the composting process caused the central haystack to ignite and the entire field then caught fire. Mr. Gupta is being held until the local magistrate returns from holiday in Perth.
When contacted regarding the story, Mr. S. Seed, a spokesman for the IIM, indicated "it was meant merely to be a 'free-thinking exercise'. We didn't think anyone would actually do it! The IIM never intended for this to be considered a recommendation." It has been a busy October for Mr. Seed. Earlier in the month local farmers brought a class action suit against the IIM for damages to their buckets and pails due to dropping bowling balls into them based on a separate IIM internet article.
