Belated deal

This refers to Shekhar Gupta’s column ‘Their deal, her hand’.

• This refers to Shekhar Gupta’s column ‘Their deal, her hand’. The right time to sign the nuclear deal has long passed. The prime minister should have taken the bold decision of signing the deal months ago. At that time the Left parties did not have the guts to withdraw support and make way for the NDA to win the mid-term poll, come to power, and end their gravy train. They now have authority without responsibility.

— Hara Lal Chakraborty

Kolkata

• The communists have been taking the Congress for a ride over the Indo-US nuclear deal, so much so that the Congress has rapidly lost credibility as a party capable of ruling the country. The Congress would have been better off without them: had it acted firmly and dissolved its marriage with the communists six months ago and gone in for polls, it would have been seen as a party that acted in the

national interest.

— R.J. Khurana

Bhopal

So secular

• This is refers to your editorial, ‘Time to move on’, and the op-ed article, ‘The shrine and the state’. The recent land transfer to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board and the protests that followed reinforce the notion that even today it is the fundamentalists who call the shots in India. If we are indeed secular, why do we have laws that are different for people of different religions? Why does the government take the management of temples and other trusts into its hands? Whatever our Constitution may say, the so-called secular parties have always sided with vote banks — at the cost of the national interest.

— Amish R. Shah

Mumbai

Loaded barrel

• The doubling of crude prices to $140 a barrel within a year has serious ramifications for most of the non-OPEC countries. However, despite the pronouncements of OPEC regarding the expected price levels of $170 or more, and its inability to create a plan to arrest the price rise, there is reasonable optimism that the oil prices will cool down substantially by the year’s end.

First, if the demand for oil falls, giving fresh impetus to the development of non-conventional sources of energy, OPEC itself stands to lose in the long run. And second, this being an election year in the US, oil prices are likely to be reined in sooner than expected.

— Navneet Dhawan

New Delhi

Homage not paid

• The editorial, ‘Flagging a gulf’, rightly castigates the government and the political class for their insensitivity to Field Marshal Manekshaw. However, to the extent that political parties represent public opinion, are we, the people, too not guilty of not showing our gratitude to our deserving soldiers? How many of us contribute generously to the soldiers’ cause on the Flag Day?

— Y.G. Chouksey

Pune