Cramping Sourav

The decision to drop Sourav Ganguly from the team was on expected lines. That the selectors found him in poor form puts the ca...

The decision to drop Sourav Ganguly from the team was on expected lines. That the selectors found him in poor form puts the cart before the horse. Their treatment of him ever since the Pakistan tour may well have made for his poor form. Even now it is not too late for the BCCI president to intervene and include him in the team, even as its 16th member. The insult implicit in his non-inclusion was avoidable. Ganguly still has good cricket left in him, as testified by no less a stalwart than Gavaskar (IE, February 25).

— A.N. Mitra, Delhi

Which vote bank?

• Shekhar Gupta’s‘Kitne Musalman Hain?’ (IE, February 18) was a brilliant analysis of the pros and cons of communalising the armed forces. The pseudo-secular Congress is trying to win back Muslims at any cost while other constituents of UPA are watching in silence.

— V. Sundararajan, Chennai

Expat’s pat

• Good that you published ‘The cowards we worship’, by Suhel Seth (IE, February 24). Despite there being a free press and what is referred to as a democracy, India is a country that allows only a few the freedom of democracy. When will this disregard for human life be addressed? I moved out of India to safeguard my family from such a scary, lawless culture, a decidedly ‘cowardly’ move many might say. But I just did not find enough people in India willing to work with me to make a change for the better.

— Amrita Budhwar, Vancouver

Modi thrives anyway

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• The Indian Express, like other English newspapers, seems obsessed with the post-Godhra riots and the number of Muslims killed. They (English newspapers) lay the entire blame at the door of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, conveniently forgetting that of the 1,000 or so killed in that period about 250 were Hindus. If Maharashtra’s judicial system is indeed so efficient why have those behind the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts not been convicted till 2006?

— Sanjeev Nayyar, Mumbai

• With regard to the Best Bakery retrial verdict, what is the credibility of a legal system which, at one point, pronounced those charged with a crime as not guilty and then, three years later, finds them guilty? If the first course of justice is said to have been manipulated then what is the guarantee that the second was not? The massacre of the Sikhs in 1984 still goes unpunished. What is being hailed as justice should be critically examined.

— Acharya S., Nagpur

Train to poverty

• While‘garibi hatao’ (eradicate poverty) has long remained a policy refrain, how is it that we now have ‘garib rath’ (chariot of the poor)? If the government is really serious about poverty alleviation, then it must first stop eulogising poverty in any form.

— P.K. Jha, Minnesota

• The problem with our railway ministers is that they compare themselves with the finance ministers while presenting the budget, believing change in fares and introduction of new trains are all that is expected of them. Passengers expect comfortable and hassle-free journey, free from trouble from ticketless travellers and hawkers. Any railway minister capable of providing these will go down in history as the best railway minister ever.

— Ganapathi Bhat, Akola

Once an MP, rape-convict Prajwal Revanna is now a clerk at prison library

Cities58 min ago

Former JD(S) MP Prajwal Revanna, grandson of former PM H D Deve Gowda, has been assigned clerical duties at Parappana Agrahara Central Prison after receiving a life sentence for rape. He earns Rs 520 per day and faces multiple charges stemming from four cases, with evidence including videos of the assaults recorded on his phone. He was found guilty in one case and still faces trial in the others.

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