Cauvery conundrum

8226; Apropos the piece, 8216;In Cauvery delta, farmers fight snakes for a meal: rats8217; IE, June 10, two...

8226; Apropos the piece, 8216;In Cauvery delta, farmers fight snakes for a meal: rats8217; IE, June 10, two observations are in order. Many communities in pastoral Tamil Nadu have been eating rats for generations, irrespective of whether food is available in abundance or not. Eating rats and snails is no different from rabbits and oysters in French cuisine and civet cat and water cockroaches in Chinese.
Secondly, given the current circumstances, rice is not the best crop for TN to cultivate. It needs too much water to grow. Whether Karnataka releases water or not, Cauvery is drying up for sure. The real problem is the large scale depletion of catchment areas in the Western Ghats which no politician addresses. Rice and Cauvery have a special place in TN8217;s history and it is pretty hard to give up. But times change!

8212; Jagadish

8226; This seems a very biased report. In Karnataka last summer and this summer many more farmers committed suicide than in Tamil Nadu. The reporter should have looked at the lives of Karnataka8217;s farmers, too.

8212; Prasanna

8226; I feel extremely sorry for the poor farmers who are forced to resort to inhuman practices. And all over a dam. Forgive me if I appear naive, but is there no other way to augment water, like rainwater harvesting? Why make people undergo such hardships when the solution is so simple?

8212; Anjan Dani

Look at Sunnis too

8226; With reference to Saeed Naqvi8217;s piece,8216;Look again at Iraq8217; IE, June 11, Iraq has multiple centres of gravity, not just Najaf/Karbala. India should not make the same mistake the US did and ignore the Sunni Arab establishment which has the ability to wreck any political settlement. Relying on the Shi8217;ites alone will not ensure stability. They8217;re 55 per cent of the population, not 65 per cent, as Naqvi states. The Kurds are also a factor.

8212; S. Duraiswamy

Blind leaders

8226; While I am no fan of the Congress, I am absolutely stunned that the BJP is even now unable to understand the level of disgust the common man has for someone like Judeo 8216;Judeo, MP?8217;, June 12. It does not matter how many 8220;goondas8221; he can mobilise or or how much money he can raise 8212; here is a fundamentally corrupt and tainted individual who will only undermine any image that the BJP is trying to project. Are people at the top so removed from reality that they cannot see this?

8212; Surya T.

The right education

8226; My uncle once asked which subject is doing well right now 8212; computer science or electronics? His son was about to finish his 12th standard. I just did not understand the question. To me one can specialise in any subject you like, you can become an artist, a musician, an economist, or an electronic engineer. This premium attached to an engineering or medical education is all wrong and could cause a lot of sociological problems, as Ravinder Kaur pointed out 8216;Education, as a ticket to ride8217;, June 10.

8212; Ram