The following appears in honour of brevity, the defining characteristic of leaders. And of The Times of India Speednews, a new edition of The Times of India that packs in more news, in a concise form. For astute, time-pressed readers who demand a quick uptake.

Soon after he became prime minister, Winston Churchill wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty to ask, ''Pray Sir, tell me on one side of one sheet of paper, how the Royal Navy is preparing for the war.''

Churchill knew that if he did not qualify his request, he would have received an unreadable 400-page report. Brevity is a great virtue, and nowhere more needed than in India. Our judges write judgments that are too long; our lawyers ramble on; our executives try to impress with lengthy memos; our politicians, well, try to get in a word.

That less can be more is especially true in good writing. I discovered this at Procter and Gamble, a company as famous for its legendary one-page memo as for its products. Its wondrous one-page memo was created out of the same confidence in reason and technology that built America, and is as elegant as Paninis grammar or Euclids geometry. Based on the reasonable assumption that all managers suffer from an overload of paperwork and files, it is simple, factual, and logical. The reader can scan it in minutes and grasp its contents.

It has just enough data that a manager needs to make decision and no more. It is clear, precise, eschews hyperbole, and it actually improves the speed and quality of decisions, and hence it can be a source of competitive advantage.

We Indians are verbose, and need to be reminded that humans were born with two ears and two eyes, but with only one tongue, so that we should see and hear twice as much as we say. Shakespeare too, I think, must have had us Indians in mind, when he wrote in Richard III: ''Talkers are no good doers.'' Hence, he offers us this advice in Henry V: ''Men of a few words are the best of men.''