A vision for India

To me, India empowered means that all of poor and rural India gets two meals a day, shelter and basic amenities ...

To me, India empowered means that all of poor and rural India gets two meals a day, shelter and basic amenities like electricity and water. There must be no death because of starvation. And unemployment should be an alien word for the country and citizen. Only then can we proudly say that we are an emerging economy. Otherwise the poor are getting poorer and the rich are richer and we are heading nowhere.

8212; Bal Govind Bareilly

All8217;s well

8226; What was once a party with a difference, out of power is a party of differences. It augurs well that Madanlal Khurana, after intervention by A.B. Vajpayee, has expressed his willingness to work under L.K. Advani and has been taken back into the party fold. After all, we live in the age of compromise. Also, one should not lose sight of the fact that Khurana is a senior leader who has devoted his entire life to nurturing the party.

8212; Ram Gurbaxani Minneapolis

Going down

8226; For several weeks, news relating to conflict within the BJP has been hitting the national headlines. As the days go by, the differences within the party only become sharper. I wonder whether the people of India placed greater confidence in the party than it deserved. If the present trend continues, either the party will split or be rejected by the electorate decisively.

8212; N.S. Venkataraman On e-mail

Story of a purge

8226; The piece, 8216;A million bridges8217; by B.G. Verghese IE, September 10 is idealistic. In fact, the problem has been with us ever since the sword of a marauding Islam landed in Afghanistan and then in Sindh. Since that time, the great reconciling forces of the Indian subcontinent have tried to devise a peaceful middle ground 8212; one of such attempts by Guru Nanak created the Sikh panth. But nothing has stopped the annihilation of the civilisations that lay between a razing Islam and the subcontinent. All those civilisations have disappeared without trace, thanks to the deadly purge of any traces of their culture, art, civilisation or music.

8212; Ravindra Harsoor Chicago

Old, vulnerable

8226; As October 1 8212; designated as the International Day of Older Persons 8212; draws closer, it is time yet again to review the situation of this vulnerable section of society. In India at present over 75 per cent of the elderly are from rural areas. They are mostly illiterate. Since they have worked, by and large, in the unorganised sector, they have no safety nets or pension to fall back on 8216;Not the right bill8217;, IE, September 10. In other words, they live in a state of penury at the very time when they find themselves physically and mentally debilitated. Old people lack mobility and, perhaps worst of all, lose their memory and use of their mental faculties. We need to think about this section of the population in terms of active policy-making, not just on October 1.

8212; Mahindar Singh New Delhi

Just talk

8226; By all accounts, the women8217;s reservation Bill is once again relegated to the backburner. Political parties have no intention of giving 33 per cent of the seats to women. We continue to talk about women8217;s empowerment and to deny them a just representation in decision-making.

8212; R. S. Chaudhury Delhi