Intelligent cues

Double standards?

• Your editorial inveighs against strikers, describing them as the “perpetually disgruntled” (‘Strike out strikes’, IE, August 18). I am rather surprised. When the FIIs and speculators withdrew their money from the Sensex in May in an effort to pressure the new government, your newspaper attacked the Left and the government for being “irresponsible”. When stockbrokers threatened protests over the turnover tax, you and other newspapers called it “ill-advised” and told the government that it shouldn’t force the brokers into protests. So is it that the government should “stand firm” against union-led ‘‘blackmail’’ but should roll over at the slightest sign of Dalal Street-led ‘‘blackmail’’? Seems like a blatant double standard.

— S. Gopalakrishnan London

Speed up the court

• Well, everybody worries about criminalisation of politics, but Somnath dada makes a valid point — “what if a tainted minister is acquitted” (in the Walk the Talk interview, IE, August 18). So, the problem and the solution lie in the judiciary. We may be a great democracy but we have a very slow and time consuming judicial system. Reforming the economy cannot be successful without reforming the judiciary. More courts and more judges are needed, higher salaries must be earmarked for judicial staff, and we should create a corruption free judicial system. Then Somnath Chatterjee and the country would never have to worry.

— Vikram Sood Mumbai

Congress’s crimes

• The Congress is bound to feel happy about the Supreme Court’s stinging indictment of the Gujarat government. But it has forgotten that the seeds of such communal riots were sown by the Congress itself. Can any one forget the killing of thousands of people of one community in 1984 and the episode of Blue Star. The accused are now ministers and patronised by the Congress. Even the Supreme Court has not taken any step to reopen the cases of 1984 and Operation Blue Star to secure justice.

— Tripat Singh New Delhi

Why Sonia?

• What is the official status of Sonia Gandhi that she should issue a stamp in honour of Murasoli Maran by the postal department of the government of India?

— P.K. Ramakrishnan Bangalore