Words, meanings

• Perhaps Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee should be more ...

• Perhaps Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee should be more careful with his use of words (‘Red faces over Pranab’s China war remark’, IE, September 5). Perhaps he did not mean what he said, or he did not say what he meant. Perhaps, in the hectic politics, he gets little time to do his home work. Cordial relations with neighbours is the need of the times. Exhuming old issues would only scrape painful wounds.

— F.S.K. Barar Jodhpur

Two views only?

• Apropos of ‘Spouse of life: A feminist view’, (IE, September 5), is there only this two-pronged approach to everything? Man and woman, and everything else to be defined on the basis of gender biases? The issue here is one of providing the fruit of office to your kith and kin and there is nothing sexist, feminist or anti-feminist, about that. And as columnist T.V.R. Shenoy pointed out recently on this page, even if Mr Chidambaram did not know about the entire developments, did not Mrs Chidambaram know that what she was doing?

— Kshitiz Gupta Baltimore

Biased, guv

• Governor Buta Singh’s report is out. It is evidently biased against the NDA. How could such a person be made governor? His report apprehends formation of an NDA government which was not to his taste. It is obvious that he wanted to prevent it. Who knows the same thing will not happen again, after the Bihar election results are declared this time on November 22?

— C.R. Bhattacharjee Kolkata

Teachers’ challenge

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• Animal dissection is still being used in some classrooms. In recent years, dissection has been increasingly scrutinised. Experts have re-evaluated the educational worth and morality of cutting up animals to “see how they work.” Sophisticated computer simulations, videodiscs, and models have been developed to meet the needs of students. All the studies on this issue show that students who use alternatives perform as well or better than students who use dissection. On Teacher’s Day, instructors hopefully pledged to teach science and ethics simultaneously.

— Girish Ananth Kochi

Lessons for US

• The destruction that Hurricane Katrina has left behind is heartwrenching. However, the inept response of the Bush administration exposes the soft underbelly of the world’s most powerful nation in dealing with natural calamities. Then, the hidden streak of lawlessness that lay dormant in that society was exposed by the shooting and looting. In contrast, when the tsunami struck the east coast of India, the state and central governments reacted in a commendable manner. The nation rose to the occasion with volunteers pouring in time and money. The time has come for our prime minister to offer help to the US, not in terms of money but expertise on how to cope with natural disasters.

— C.N. Kumar Bangalore

Sore loser

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee is day-dreaming when he predicts a mid-term poll. The pity is that the BJP-led NDA is still not reconciled to the fact that they lost the 2004 polls.

— P.P. Talwar Dehra Dun