Opinion Grant access

Mumbai

Nearing danger mark

• Now that food inflation has come precariously close to 20 per cent,political parties are all talking about it. In year of drought,it is known that prices have risen globally. However,one cannot doubt that there was an obvious lack of foresight. Then again,monsoons over the last few years have become difficult to predict. Nobody will say that the government is responsible for the situation. But it needs to take a call on releasing buffer stocks in time and shielding the consumer. It is the government’s job to not allow its population to starve. Economic growth is not just a collection of figures. If people having three meals a day are now consuming two,it is a shabby reflection on growth.

— Rahul Mudholkar

Pune

Catch 22

• The Congress decision over Telangana was a mere cave-in to the demands of KCR. Since KCR lost badly in the elections on the Telangana plank,why did the Congress have to make a hero of him? Now the government seems to be in a Catch 22 situation. Perhaps the government thought Andhra would accept any decision of the Centre. Now it seems as if the Centre cannot get away with the Telangana decision.

— N. Subrahmanyam

Vadodara

Exclusive schools?

• This refers to the report ‘Poor kids must sit with rich kids: HC’. Thanks to the Delhi high court’s intervention,a practical “apartheid” practised by the Sanskriti School,funded with public money,has been exposed. Our founding fathers gave us a Constitution which discarded the accursed caste system,and underlined liberalism and egalitarianism. But,it is not the “traditional”,“orthodox” elements that are trying to fight the winds of change; it is the elite.

— M. Ratan

New Delhi

Timeframes

• American President Barack Obama’s new Af-Pak policy which includes sending 30,000 more US soldiers to Afghanistan is doomed for failure. The reason for this is relatively simple. Why should what has not happened in eight years,happen in the space of the next two years?

— S. Kamat

Goa