The important fact in the bird flu scare is this: clearly, the government has the wherewithal to respond effectively to a public health emergency. The sticking point, usually, is how an emergency is to be defined. Why, for instance, does the government not define the rapid spread of malaria underway as a health emergency when it is affecting and killing a far larger population than probably will the bird flu? Why do budgetary allocations for the national programme for its control remain more or less static for so many years — and ever so often remain unspent? Why don’t the several departments — public health, environment, urban development, rural industry, pharmaceuticals — act together to control malaria? Why does the government respond to the continuing spread of leprosy — that may also be defined as a health emergency considering that it renders patients unemployable and most often outside the pale of society — by underplaying the numbers? — Farzana Nigar, Nagpur Elect the best • It's party time again in Goa’s capital city. In the run up for the Corporation of City of Panjim (CCP) polls scheduled for March 12, candidates are going all out. There’s a lot to drink and to eat. No dearth of even Chicken Xacuti, in spite of the bird flu. The elections are an opportunity for the people of Panaji to elect the best candidates who can deliver what others have failed to provide. Panaji’s pressing problems of garbage, sanitation and stray dogs would need the priority attention of the aspiring civic brothers and sisters. Panaji infrastructure needs to be upgraded. An annual whitewash of the city’s buildings at every IFFI in a jiffy is not good enough. — Aires Rodrigues, Mumbai House intruder • It is indeed a mockery of democracy that absconding MP Jai Prakash Yadav freely roamed inside Parliament and even had lunch with the Union railway minister. — S. C. Agrawal, Delhi Quicker, please • Though I fully welcome the sentence of the Jodhpur Sessions Court to actor Salman Khan in the 1998 Chinkara poaching case, I feel it is too little, too late. The judges of the Jodhpur Court should have better applied their minds to do quicker justice to this case of poaching for pleasure by the super-brat who, by his repeated acts of shooting endangered animals, has cocked a snook at the laws of the land. — G. R. Vora, Mumbai An Iraq in Iran? • President Bush addressing Iranian citizens in his state of the union address is tantamount to interfering in that country’s internal affairs. Apart from that, the US$ 85 million allocated towards supporting Iranian efforts towards ‘democracy’, are clear indications of a repeat of Iraq and show that the US is going into regime-change mode for Iran. — S. Kamat, Panaji Ignore him • Uttar Pradesh Minister for Haj and Minority Welfare, who has called for the beheading of the Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet, is best ignored. Otherwise he will become an even bigger hero than he has already contrived to become. — M.S. Rajagopalan, Ahmedabad
