Speed up justice

Leave it to students

8226; Apropos of 8216;Ministry from Hell8217; by Sagarika Ghose IE, August 4, if the history books were originally written as history books by 8220;Indian8217;8217; authors, and not 8220;British8217;8217; historians with their warped world view, the BJP would not have got the support it got for cleansing textbooks. All the people really wanted was for the books to depict history as it happened without adding any colour to it. Now the BJP tries to add saffron, the Congress is trying to colour it pseudosecular. What I fail to understand is this: why not simply depict history as it happened and leave the conclusions to the students?

8212; Shreekar Joshi On e-mail

Routine tamasha

8226; Apropos of 8216;Who broke the Trust? SEBI probes insider trading in GTB8217; IE, August 4, an open loot is exposed every few years. A big hulla-gulla takes place. VIPs make comments, media religiously publishes them all, RBI asks a nationalised bank to take over as if no serious fraud has taken place even though the loss is estimated to be in hundreds of crores. After a while, everything is forgotten. This is becoming a routine affair now!

8212; M.K. Sharma New Delhi

Bring in experts

8226; The government must hand over the task of flood control and river-interlinking to an expert body with scientists and engineers from national and if necessary international institutions. It must be free from regional politics. We are losing precious time on this issue that causes national calamity almost every year. How can a big nation like ours be complacent on this serious issue?

8212; I.R. Sharma Noida

Bad short-cut

8226; The plan being mooted by the Manipur government to rid the state of its 8216;disturbed area8217; status, by passing a legislation in the Assembly, so that the Armed Forces Special Powers8217; Act AFSPA 8212; where the army can fire or apply force upon anyone, 8220;even to the causing of death8221;, without warranting any legal action for the act 8212; would automatically become non-applicable in the state, is highly uncalled for. It could be a fact that the army is using the special powers it enjoys under this Act for perpetuating atrocities on civilians, like in the case of Manorama who was allegedly raped and killed by the soldiers. In such a case, it is the duty of the state government to institute a thorough probe into the incident and punish the guilty so that it serves as an exemplary warning to the army men that they should not misuse their powers. If the army is deprived of its powers under the AFSPA in Manipur, then they would become wary of moving against the insurgents in the future even when the situation so demands, for fear of the repercussions. This would only give a fillip to the militant outfits who are operating in the state, that would not be in the better interests of the people or the state as a whole.

8212; V. Rajesh On e-mail