Letters To The Editor

Quotas: the debate 8226; WHILE the current reservation imbroglio is on, I would like to recount a true reservation story that reveals how t...

Quotas: the debate 8226; WHILE the current reservation imbroglio is on, I would like to recount a true reservation story that reveals how the really backward view the entire issue. In the eighties, while in Chennai, the husband of my domestic help had a medical problem. I gave her the addresses of two medical specialists. Her response was an eye-opener. She said 8220;No, I will not go to him. He had managed only a reserved seat. Even among us backwards there is an 8216;internal reservation8217;.8221; The Supreme Court8217;s recent ruling on the creamy layer bears out this perception. We need a few more perceptive observers like her. 8212; T.R. Ramaswami, Mumbai

8226; APROPOS of your editorial, 8216;Layered debate8217; IE, October 20, the apex court8217;s reminder to the Union government to keep the creamy layer out of the reservation benefits and to ensure an 8220;overall efficiency of state administration8221; is a warning that any dilution of excellence, deterioration of standards and an indifferent approach to education and administration will impede our prospects of becoming a knowledge economy. Recourse to caste-based reservations is no solution for the socio-economic backwardness of our people. In a globalised world, it is talent and performance that matter. The other day, Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy said: 8220;The employer does not know what caste you belong to or what language group. He only makes sure that you deliver.8221; We need a national debate on reservations. 8212; Ved Guliani, Hisar

Police reform 8226; RECENT directives of the Supreme Court on reforming the police set-up are to be implemented by the year end. The unwillingness of politicians and bureaucrats, however, to loosen their grip on the police force undermines this thrust. In this context, we welcome India8217;s gesture in joining the global move towards police reforms 8212; the Altus Global Justice Alliance, a Hague-based organisation, has launched a global movement by organising a police station visitor8217;s week. This, it claims, will bring police stations into the public domain through the involvement of the community, ensuring transparency in their functioning. In India, police stations in Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh would be visited by groups of local residents. It is surprising that a major state like Uttar Pradesh has not joined this movement. It shows the lack of interest by some state governments in this progressive step. 8212; Shariq Alavi, New Delhi

Vietnam rerun 8226; APROPOS of the news report, 8216;US loses 10 more troops in Iraq8217; IE, October 19, the US thinks it is the ruler of the world or its police. It is neither. It marched into Vietnam and came back with a bloody nose and great loss of lives, after wasting billions of dollars of taxpayers8217; money. It went into Iraq, fooling the whole world that there were WMDs, and as a champion of the world8217;s safety. In reality, the US itself is a country with weapons of mass destruction. Most of the other countries have withdrawn their forces or are in the process of doing so. The Americans are bound to withdraw from Iraq with a bloody nose, after having set the country on fire. They should have learnt the lessons of the David and Goliath story. 8212; Behram Aga , Mumbai