India Inc’s burden

• The prime minister has given valuable advice to India Inc. As wealth in this country grows, and continues to be restricted to only the middle and upper classes, a disaster looms. By giving the economically weaker sections of the population a better life, a huge market can be created. If Corporate India realises this, it would not only do great service to society, it would also maximise its profits.

— Ramesh Lahoti Mumbai

• As the prime minister of a nation on the verge of breaking with the past, Manmohan Singh should be more responsible in his signals to the business community and society at large. As an accomplished economist, he knows better. Investment in primary, secondary and vocational education along with careful nurturing of the systems would hold the key to alleviation of poverty and oppression. Quotas and reservations will only exacerbate the situation. The prime minister should ask the private sector to invest in education and training.

— K. Narasimha Rao Hyderabad

Politics, not police

• The views expressed in your editorial ‘Police, not army’ (October 8) lead to the conclusion that lack of proper policing is the cause of the problems in the Northeast. However, one needs to ask why the police should be called in to start with? The seeds of the rot are planted by poor politics and governance and that is where the solution also lies. A demoralised, ineffective police force is just a symptom. Unless politics itself is cleansed, India will continue to fumble from one politically instigated crisis to another. It is unfortunate that the remedy lies in the hands of the very people who created the problem — a case of “physician heal thyself”?

— Dara Cooper Pune

Rural resolutions

• The burden of the Oxbridge set’ by Sagarika Ghose (IE, October 4) points to how Stephanian and Oxonian brothers-under-the-skin Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Mani Shankar Aiyar are facing fire from, respectively, the Left parties and the Sangh Parivar. From this, Ghose concludes that relying on the same ‘‘scotch and tikka’’ set is a political mistake. Years ago, former prime minister Charan Singh, in his ‘‘India’s poverty and its solutions’’, cited British economist Michael Lipton’s emphasis on the ‘‘continuing urban bias’’ in Indian planning. This was in 1980 and nothing has changed. ‘‘India’’ and ‘‘Bharat’’ have two distinct identities, with most of our ruling elite paying only lip-service to the latter. Bringing in grassroots workers will certainly help correct this distortion in our governance and planning process.

— Vinod Chowdhury Delhi