India, China, US

8226; Apropos of the piece,8216;India-China-US giants at play8217; IE, July 30, by Ziad Haider, I8217;m an ordinary reader and would like to react to some of the points in it. Though China is a huge trading partner of India, she is mostly a consumer of raw materials 8212; steel, for example 8212; while the US consumes value added products and services like software and BPO-services. As the Indian economy takes off domestic demand for infrastructure building raw materials will actually rise very sharply. While more value-added exports could certainly make up in the long run, it will not, I feel, lead to a point of convergence vis-a-vis US interest as most of our growth will be in high-end manufacturing and knowledge-economy services. Energy convergence with the hungry dragon next door? No way. They will ruthlessly outbid the somewhat spindly elephant. The India-Iran-Pak-China pipeline is a way to help get them off our backs, not the other way round. Iran and the current Afghan regime may be our friends but just as India has to live with F16s for Pakistan the US will have to live with the India-Iran relationship.
Think Indians were upset because of the Iraq invasion. Know why? They didn8217;t want the focus to leave Afghanistan. We hate the Taliban and their Pakistani masters. Visit the drawing rooms of Delhi or Mumbai and the writer will realise that Indians love George Bush. Polls show the same thing too. And if giving us nuke-tech is part of their unilateralism, it helps us even more. The US and India need each other most for a worst-case doomsday scenario. A Taliban mullah in charge of a nuclear Pakistan. The only way to take them out will be their airforce and our ground forces. That8217;s why 8220;inter-operability8221; training is a continuous request of US armed forces. Haider8217;s article was interesting and thought-provoking.

8212; Parshu Narayanan New Delhi

Wrong message

8226; If a governor during President8217;s rule throws established norms, traditions and propriety to the wind, the state drifts towards the crimnalisation of politics and politicisation of crime 8216;Bihar8217;s law 038; disorder8217;, IE, August 1. By kow-towing to the whims of Laloo Yadav, Buta Singh has turned Bihar into a fiefdom of people like Shahabuddin and Sadhu. This indefensible act of the governor has sent out a rather dangerous message.

8212; Ved Guliani Hissar

Disaster planning

8226; Predicting weather can be like counting the number of stars in a galaxy 8216;Prediction of Mumbai killer rains was impossible8217;, IE, August 3. Even if these events are eventually predicted with more sophisticated equipment, the question pertains to contingency plans rather than prediction. Time and again our governments and bureaucrats have demonstrated their ineptitude in coping with a natural disaster, predicted or unpredicted. Should we really think that a prediction would have unclogged Mumbai8217;s drainage in 24 hours?

8212; K. Narasimha Rao Hyderabad

Helping divorcees

8226; As a welfare measure, the Union finance ministry is requested to extend to legally separated women the facility of depositing their alimony in the senior citizen scheme in post offices or the SBI. This is the only scheme that yields an interest of 9 per cent interest and would be very beneficial for this category of women who have very meagre finances to live on.

8212; A.B. Chepe Nagpur