This refers to your Cover Story on the crash of the real estate market (The Free Fall, July 10). The expected course correction of the unrealistically high prices in the housing market had to happen with the passage of the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act 2016, aimed at reining in unscrupulous builders. Moreover, the sudden announcement of demonetisation further gave a blow to the inflated sector as it was a hitherto safe haven for unaccounted money. With dubious players unable to make a quick buck exiting the market, prices are bound to stabilise as the economics of demand and supply takes over. On the flip side, the unfinished projects stranded midway will hurt the economy and may also lead to litigations.
Vijai Pant, On E-Mail
Owning a house has been a long-cherished dream of the urban middle class. This is the class which was in a rat-race for residential flats. As is always the case, profit-hungry builders exploited the demand-supply gap and went on a price-raising spree till owning a house became almost impossible for the middle class. Buyers fled and the builders fell flat. The cover story tells that on an average, prices since 2015 have fallen 30-40 per cent in most parts of the country. Still, the buyers are at bay, perhaps waiting for the real estate prices to bottom out, not exactly knowing what the bottom level is.
M.C. Joshi, Lucknow
Food, clothing and shelter are considered as basic necessities of life. But nowadays people are giving too much importance to ‘shelter’ and building palatial mansions on which they spend enormous amounts. The idea of what a house should be like has undergone a drastic change over the years. Everyone is obsessed with status. Even if someone chooses a small house, the investment for construction is usually done in huge amounts (Being Small Is Beautiful). Nobody seems to be satisfied with tiled floors. The demand for marble and granite has increased. People do not hesitate to cough up huge sums to build their dream houses. The limitless expenditure for interior decoration following latest trends such as Vastu Shastra and Feng Shui concepts is continuously increasing. Modular kitchens are in vogue. So small certainly has become beautiful, but also incredibly costly.
M.K.Somanatha Panicker, Alappuzha
In hindsight, the property price fall is only a symptom of India’s ailing economy. It is tempting to say that demonetisation may have reduced the flow of black money to purchase properties, but in reality, under-development in various sectors and jobless growth could be the real factors behind it. After all, the prices had started to fall way before ‘notebandi’. It remains to be seen if Modi’s transformative decisions would stabilise the property prices with a positive impact on the country’s economy. Nevertheless, the fall in property prices will make housing more affordable.
Sanjiv Gupta, Perth
Property rates are always based on rumours, and isn’t media the best rumour-monger?
Santosh Raj, Pune
This is in reference to the growing roles for actresses from the ’80s and ’90s (Roaring Forties Storm B-Town, July 10). It’s not just a man’s world in Bollywood, for women are taking over lead, mature roles. At last, the trend of women-centric movies is finding its place in mainstream Bollywood. Watching a film with a female lead was a rarity. But this is no longer the case, and women’s issues and active participation of women in social movements have been projected in films like Piku, NH10, English Vinglish, Queen and Angry Indian Goddesses. The variety is impressive—NH10 highlighted ‘honour killing’, and a woman’s fight against the scourge; in Piku, the protagonist defies social conventions; in Queen, a woman finally breaks through the shackles that bound her and in Angry Indian Goddesses, issues like independent women, depression, marital rape and ‘stigma’ related to divorced or lesbian women are tackled. Women’s sexuality also is an issue that needs to be portrayed more. The change is afoot, women-centric films are here to stay, and they are welcome.
Priyam Sinha, New Delhi
This is apropos the story of Narendra Modi’s journey to the US to meet Donald Trump for the first time (Travelling With The Prima Donna, Jul 10). It’s said that people must be judged by their actions and not their words. Most of us had hardly set a high bar for the meeting between Modi and Trump. Nothing much came out of it, except for frequent hugs, and over-the-top television coverage in India (most top US channels hardly accorded it much importance). The most tangible consequence of the meeting was the blacklisting of Hizb leader Syed Salahuddin and the common resolve to fight terror. The main Indian take-away from the visit is the assurance that the India-US strategic partnership will survive under this unpredictable US president. They also acknowledged a common maritime threat from China. Finally, would the common pitch on terror compensate for India’s distancing from Iran, China and Russia? Such a plan of action with the US might have set off a churn in India’s relations with other countries.
J. Akshay, Bangalore
This is about Pradeep Magazine’s column on the common Indian’s fantasy involving an India vs Pakistan match (Onfield Nationalism From A Box, Jul 3). Both India and Pakistan are cricket crazy nations; their meetings on the field are charged with extra passion. We may reason that history and unending hostility between the two may have a lot to do with it, but it’s undeniable that a clever media hype to ratchet up TRPs is also a reason. All businesses related to the match, big or small, are the real winners of an India vs Pakistan match.
Vijai Pant, On E-Mail
When BJP president Amit Shah calls Gandhi a ‘chatur (cunning) bania’, it only reveals the sickness of his mind, which is influenced by the philosophy of RSS, which has scorned Gandhi’s legacy time and again. Gandhi is hailed the world over as ‘Mahatma’ with social justice icons such as the late Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela among the ardent followers of his philosophy.
Raj Narasimha, Secunderabad
This refers to What’s In, or Not In, a Name (July 10). These days, a mere name could mean life or death. The ‘Not In My Name’ placards held by members of the urban elite at several places across India in protest against the recent spate of lynchings were just condolence messages for the innocent victims of ‘Hindu jihad’, which draws its force from generations of angst against those who came as ‘invaders’, settled here by ‘trickery’—misusing Indian hospitality and exploiting the weaknesses of the fragmented kingdoms—and started dreaming of making India an exclusive state of their faith. The current episodes of mob violence have created a fear psychosis by first targeting the most vulnerable Muslims, Dalits and women. The future looks bleak unless there is a miracle.
M.N. Bhartiya, Goa
That President Pranab Mukherjee, PM Narendra Modi and even UP CM Yogi Adityanath have taken note of the rising trend of mob lynching and have had to speak about it, really shows how grave the menace of vigilante violence has become. The government should not allow the hallowed ‘people’ to be replaced by the ‘lynch mob’.
KP Rajan, Mumbai
I refuse to give my name to this assault on my country’s pluralist character. Following the country-wide protests by ordinary citizens, the highest authorities spoke on the matter the very next day. Another person was lynched in Jharkhand on that day.
Rakesh Agrawal, Dehradun
This refers to your leader comment Salahuddin and the Mob (July 10), which aptly sums up Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and lynching of hapless Indians in the same breath. To further your point on minorities in India, I want to point out that the Brahmins—a minuscule minority that dominates all spheres of Indian life, including the media—have been creating all sorts of binaries to maintain their stranglehold on other Indians. Thanks to the debates taking place on the social media, their nexus with corporate Banias has been exposed as never before.
Ayushman, On E-Mail
This refers to your 50 years of Naxalbari (April 24) series to commemorate the summer of the ’67 peasant uprising in north Bengal’s Naxalbari village. The articles took me back 40 years, to my PhD days in Visakhapatnam campus of Andhra University. That campus was where I met the budding radicals, who later became top leaders in the Maoist party. Among my friends was a postgraduate student of law. He tried to convince many of us, who had come together in protests against the Emergency, to join the Radical Students Union (RSU). But we disagreed with the RSU’s ideology. RSU was very popular in the Regional Engineering College at Warangal and Osmania University, Hyderabad. A few RSU activists from there had joined postgraduate programmes in our university, mostly in engineering. One of them was Cherukuri Rajkumar, who would be killed in 2010 while pursuing peace talks with the central government. We had arguments on armed movements, which I saw as futile and the others insisted was the need of the hour. There was widespread sympathy for Naxalites killed in cold blood in the Srikakulam forests during the Emergency. I have always believed that all violence is bad, irrespective of the perpetrator and the victim. The radicals believed I was equating violence with resistance to violence.
One day the radicals arranged a wonderful performance by balladeer Gaddar, which showed a mirror to society and drew a lot from folklore. The students loved it, but not many joined the RSU. I reasoned that they were not joining the movement because of many questions on their minds, which the leaders had been leaving unanswered. I put forward some questions that are just as relevant today. First, is there any model state in the world where the people are not complaining of exploitation? The number of deaths due to the State in China is higher than the number of Maoists the police kill in India. At least in India, we have an independent judiciary and a civil society that are allowed to question illegal detention and execution without trial. So how can Maoists claim to create a ‘new world’?
And if this ‘new world’ does emerge, will there be no policing? Will it be a society without caste, religion and gender distinction? Who will own the property? How will people be paid for their work? Who will allot the work? From where will he derive that authority? From the gun or from the gang? There was no answer except a reiteration that the new system will be much better than the existing system—no different from what is always claimed in the pre-poll manifesto of any opposition party. Maoists are dissidents in the existing democratic set-up. As dissidents, they are harassed, hounded, jailed and even eliminated cruelly. Supposing the regime changes and the Maoists set up their administration, will they treat dissidents any better than Maoists are treated now?
Duggaraju Srinivasa Rao, Vijayawada
Anything that is acquired for a monetary consideration is a commercial transaction and is bound by some legality (Installing The End Of Privacy, July 3). How can these app providers claim legal immunity when they are involved in snooping on people’s personal data, which they even sell to other corporates without the knowledge of the customer! However weak the law may be, its non-compliance is still illegal. Laws do not become inoperative simply because a particular set of terms and conditions are tweaked by the service providers.
V.N. Ramaswamy, Hyderabad
The health segment (July 3) looked well conceived, carrying interesting facts. The write-ups are a must-read for city people, where health often gets neglected due to little leisure hours (when there is immense stress at workplace) and when food is largely non-traditional and its intake is erratic. All this, amid a sedentary lifestyle with inadequate sleep. Hope it will give a wake-up call to those who think wealth is health.
Kamal Anil Kapadia, Mumbai
President Pranab Mukherjee called the GST a “disruptive change”, but this isn’t the first such experience from the Modi government (The Taxmen Strike At 12, July 10). Last year, demonetisation saw people having had to beg to get their own money from banks. Now, the GST is yet to show any beneficial results, amid angry response from political parties and traders. The most notable effect of this tax has been it having divided the Opposition, which will prove a boon for the BJP and bane for the Congress.
L.J. Singh, Amritsar
It is surprising the media hasn’t highlighted the concerns of senior citizens over the skyrocketing taxes on their annual health insurance premium. While anti-GST protests gain steam in many industries, the elderly have nowhere to go to represent their grievances. The GST on health insurance premium for senior citizens was already 15 per cent; the GST regime has pegged it at 18 per cent. The government has perhaps forgotten that there are a large number of senior citizens not covered by pension and healthcare benefits that people who worked for the government enjoy.
Kangayam R. Narasimhan, Chennai