• It’s ‘‘India’s loss’’. Those were the words used by the visiting Singapore minister Goh Chok Tong, on the Indian government’s refusal to let the IIM go to Singapore. The issue underlines the need forÿsuch top notch institutions to enjoy the right to autonomy. — C.R. Bhattacharjee Kolkata Bad deal • The HRD ministry’s opposition to IIMs setting up institutes abroad is intriguing especially when foreign universities are aggressively setting up shop here and wooing Indian students. The IIM initiative could help build India’s brand image and provide international exposure to our faculty. Financial returns from overseas ventures can be used to expand the network of business schools at home as desired by the HRD minister. — J.M. Manchanda On e-mail Short sighted lot • I share the anguish of R.K. Pachauri, Director General of TERI and chief of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IE, ‘Walk the Talk’ interview, January 17). He says that not enough is being done by the citizens of India to demand change from the powers-that-be. The likes of Katrinas, Ritas, Wilmas, Pyar, Mumbai floods, Bangalore and Kolkata are not the last that we have seen. Unfortunately, there’s more to come. It is true that despite all our intellectual strengths, we don’t focus on the long term issues at all. We have become so myopic. Where is it going to take us? — G.R. Vora Mumbai The ordeal • I flew in from Paris, landing at about midnight in Delhi for a brief visit. I was so frightened to see the mob of people in the immigration area as nobody was moving. People just stood still. Eventually, bit by bit, we proceeded to the immigration counters. It took two and a half hours. A British businessman who was standing beside me said he would never invest in India for the next 10 to 15 years until the chaos was taken care of. He didn’t wait to see what lay outside the airport before making the decision. What was so appalling was that there were more men standing along the walls than officers processing passports. Are those men so important that they can’t help process the passports to facilitate a faster turnover? I believe the reason Indian politicians are uninterested in taking care of this mess is that by the time they have the privilege of travelling abroad, they can use the VIP channel, without having to wait for hours to get out of the hot, untidy airport. I have been to many countries but I have never seen immigration officers standing by and watching a mob scene. You should send them abroad and show them how efficient other countries are. — Emie Stringfellow On e-mail Learn from Telgi • Telgi, the notorious accused in the multi-crore stamp-paper scam, has at last been convicted in the first of his long-pending trials. But it seems the government has not learnt anything from the huge scam. The scam was possible because of the faulty system of selling stamp-paper through private vendors, which continues even at present. Stamp-paper should be sold through all bank-branches (nationalised or private) and post-offices by giving them a commission on sales. — Madhu Agrawal Delhi
