NAM and nothing

Delhi

Caving in

•Somnath Chatterjee’s volte-face came as a huge disappointment (‘Let them speak’). Having finally taken a bold but overdue decision against recalcitrant MPs, who lowered the dignity of the House, he should not have stepped back. It appears that he has opted for “immediate peace” at the cost of the need of the hour. For now, one hopes that better sense will prevail on the habitual offenders from the opposition benches and that they will refrain from repeating their theatrics.

— Shahabuddin Nadeem

Bangalore

Middle muddle

• To be fair, George W. Bush was taking the heat off the diversion of foodcrops for biofuels in the US ‘Bushsays Indian middle-class fuels food prices’. But, as usual, he got the facts wrong when he quoted the size of India’s middle class as “350 million”. A recent report on the informal sector estimates that 880 million Indians subsist on less than $2 a day. The millions living on $3-$5 a day cannot be termed as middle class either.

While the true size of India’s middle class is the subject of much political self-congratulation and corporate research, not much credibility lies with the methodologies on which many of these estimates are based. Despite the heated response in India to Bush’s remarks, no one seems to have mentioned the role of rapidly rising obesity in the West. Some 25 per cent of adult Americans and a similar proportion of children are now counted among the obese. Bush should have mentioned chronic over-consumption and greed as a driving factor for high food prices.

— Sanjeev Prakash

New Delhi

Neighbourly succour

•Cyclone Nargis has caused large-scale devastation in Myanmar, killing over 22,000 people and causing incalculable damage to infrastructure. People who have been rendered homeless face power and water supply breakdowns. Food and medical aid are also in short supply. The people of Myanmar need India’s help. True, years of military dictatorship has isolated Myanmar from rest of the world, but this is not the time to dwell on such matters. One hopes that the world, and India in particular, rushes to the help of the people of Myanmar.

— R.J. Khurana

Bhopal