Nepotic ministers

Ghaziabad

Speedy noose

• ”Hang me, don’t dilly-dally,” says high-profile terror convict Mohammed Afzal. A person who has no life other than facing the gallows dies every second. Afzal committed an awful crime, the consequences of which he cannot escape, but as a civilised, peace-loving country India could go through with the punishment without dragging it on in view of the coming election so as to garner minority votes. The government is unnecessarily delaying the case. Whether to execute him now or spare him should be decided soon.

— Swetha R. Deepak

Chennai

Shining the light

• The realistic step by the Centre of hiking the fuel price will prove beneficial in the long run. The fear of an inflationary tendency in the economy has to be understood in its perspective. It is due not so much to the rising costs of fuel as to profiteering by hoarding essential commodities. The government has to crack down on profiteers, and unproductive spending has to be curtailed. There should be a ban on night cricket too. That will save the precious power for industries. Consumerism makes sense where production, both agricultural and industrial, increases.

— B.B. Goyal

Ludhiana

The other price

• This is with reference to your editorial, ‘Logical terrorism’. The BJP and opposition parties have called for a one-day agitation against the fuel price hike. The CPM, in another act of one-upmanship, has declared a weeklong nationwide bandh. Hundreds of crores worth of losses will be caused by the destruction of public property, missed manpower, extra law enforcement deployment expenditure, etc. The government should have anticipated these costs while fixing the fuel price hike.

— N. Kunju

Delhi

Correction

• In the piece on the edit page, ‘No heart in heartland’, “five” prime ministers should have read “four” prime ministers from UP. The allusion was to four of the total of eight PMs from UP who completed their terms.

The error is regretted.

— Editor