Letters to the editor

India generates 1,29,000 MW of power annually against the total demand for almost 2,00,000 MW — a shortfall of 40 per cent. The country has ample potential for renewable sources like wind, water and solar energy. These are hazard-free, cheap, and are easy to install. For instance, of a total potential of wind power of over 45,000 MW, India uses only 2,900 MW today. Small hydro-power plants have the potential of adding 15,000 MW. Then there is power potential in biomass and urban and industrial waste. Let’s think out of the box for energy solutions.

— Vitull K. Gupta

Bhatinda

Wanted: sex ed

• RECENTLY, the government’s move on Adolescent Sex Education (ASE) Programme prepared by NACO, UNICEF and NCERT for class IX and XI has evoked great opposition. I find this amazing. Children need to be prepared to face the realities of life. As per recent statistics, two out of three children in India are physically abused and about 50 per cent of such victims are abused by people known to them. Children are also affected by the AIDS/HIV pandemic. As per the 2006

Behavioural Surveillance Survey, more than 1.5 crore of our youths are sexually active. Likewise, according to a recent survey conducted in 11 cities, one in four Indian women aged 18 to 30 has sex before marriage. In this situation, 40 per cent of Indian women have not even heard of AIDs. Given this, isn’t it important to educate our children on sex and sexually transmitted diseases?

— Pritpal Singh

New Delhi

Guilty as charged?

• WHEN Dr Mohammed

Haneef was detained in connection with the Glasgow bomb blasts, Indian news channels started beaming his photograph as the new face of terror in the continent without waiting for the necessary evidence from the Australian law authorities. He was, as everybody knows now, released, as there was absolutely nothing to indict him. In short he was not guilty. But the channels have still not learnt a thing. A number of them are today happily beaming the photographs of some Muslim youngsters who have been detained by the police but have not been indicted by the courts. It is hard to understand why the media always forgets that a person can be pronounced guilty only by the country’s law courts and not by the police or the media.

— Sandeep Ghiya

Mumbai

Camera savvy

• THE Bhagalpur incident has rightly raised our hackles (‘Bhagalpur syndrome’, IE, August 30) and it did reveal that nothing has changed in Bihar since the days of the infamous blindings. However, I cannot understand one thing. Why don’t those filming such incidents for the media intervene and put an end to such inhuman acts? Do they not realise that sometimes their very presence at the scene of the problem motivates the offenders to become more aggressive in their actions, in a desire to preen before the cameras?

— S. Kamat

Alto Betim