Congratulations Outlook, for exposing the unconstitutional activities within the pmo at a time when only one TV channel seems to be talking about it (Rigging the pmo, March 5). One’s aware of the nexus between politicos and big business houses but more surprising is how many of our national dailies and other media have joined hands with them. These newspapers have the space to carry pictures of farmhouse parties but no place for real news. They seem to have got their share of the booty, with the blessings of the PM, the industrialists and Shri Mishraji.
Raman Saxena, New Delhi
Your outright denouncement of the efforts of the pmo seems to be unfair, unjustified and unwarranted. The pmo is nothing but an extended arm of the PM, and by activating it, industrialists are only sending signals to dithering and procrastinating babus.
R. Doraisamy, on e-mail
I’m delighted to read that N.K. Singh and Brajesh Mishra are taking on the bureaucratic holy cow by its horns. Frankly ‘two individuals and a clutch of business houses’ are preferable to the vicious procedures and subcommittees that have destroyed our economy. I’m not a votary of any of the persons accused in Rigging the pmo but they’re all attempting to fast-forward reform and who better than them to do so? You call the Ambanis and Hindujas manipulators, but that’s exactly what this country needs, not passive, power-hungry bureaucrats. I’m disappointed that Outlook’s condemned the few who’re trying to make the system more responsive.
V.R. Chopra, on e-mail
The clout the Ambanis and Hindujas have is hardly surprising. The Ambanis were the only ones to have had a private audience with Bill Clinton while the Hindujas are probably invited to every big political function in Britain. The turnover of their companies is bigger than the budgets of some smaller nations. And being fund-providers for election campaigns, their clout with the pmo is but natural.
Anshu Mathur, Ahmedabad
Your cover story reminded me of Indira Gandhi’s times when the Dhawans, the Fotedars and the Gopi Aroras called the shots. The pmo, it seems, has become a Policy Making Office assisted by Seasoned Masters of Governance or the smg.
P.K. Srivastava, Ghaziabad
Magazines like Outlook will save this country yet.
Mohandas K.K., Bhat, Gandhinagar
Thanks to Outlook, we keep having a nexusquake from time to time. A transfer 22 times in 36 years of service is enough proof of Dr E.A.S. Sarma’s honesty. Bravo to him.
Satyam Ranjeet, on e-mail
Your cover story was nothing but a series of allegations, lacking any documentary evidence. Also, is the Enron agreement really bad for India or is the real reason our inability to charge our consumers? If so, bailouts will become part of all power-generation agreements with private parties.
M.K. Jain, New Delhi
Not learning from past and present mistakes has become a way of life with our politicians. With zealots, cynics and profiteers all around us, inevitable is the banana republic that Dr Sarma predicts.
Syed Altaf Ahmed, Chennai
For years, bureaucrats have held the nation to ransom and not allowed any policy to be implemented till they got their cut. And now that the pmo and certain select officers have decided to get reforms going, it’s being opposed. Whose side are you on, Outlook?
Brig K.S. Chhokar, Delhi
Yours is a one-sided story. The Group of Ministers as an institution is not A. B. Vajpayee’s creation. It derives its authority from the cabinet. By implying Singh and Mishra create GoMs, you display your ignorance. And why should a secretary complain if the PM meets Dhirubhai? Who else has created in India what he has?
Sachidanand Singh, on e-mail
The manner in which the pmo seems to be short-circuiting established procedures in giving concessions and granting favours to a chosen few has taken even some of the nda constituents by surprise, what to speak of officials in the ministries. By doing so, they have belied the expectations of the electorate.
V.B.N. Ram, New Delhi
Our economy is being controlled by a few whose main qualification is the power of pelf. Globalisation, market economy and the encroachment of information technology right up to the kitchen have not helped improve the condition of the common man. Workers are denied minimum wages while employers indulge in a vulgar display of wealth.
V.V. Vijayan, Mumbai
When these big business houses can have agents in the pmo, and when several national leaders can receive direct kickbacks from their touts, what future can India hope for? Vajpayee and Advani had promised a white paper on isi two years ago. Did they suddenly develop cold feet? It’s not the isi, but some of our leaders and bureaucrats who are the bigger threat to our nation’s security.
Vishv Bandhu Gupta, New Delhi
I can’t remember any issue where Outlook’s had a good thing to say about our country. It has a penchant for sensationalism which makes it a widely-read, if not a widely-respected magazine.
Sanjeev Nayyar, Mumbai
I was only a bit surprised to know that decisions in the pmo are influenced by big business houses. I thought this was the order of the day in India. Call it a step towards the privatisation of government departments. Being a self-confessed ‘swayamsevak’, the PM firmly believes in the adage: ‘Charity begins at home’!
Vikramaditya Kunte, on e-mail
At this rate, the pmo will sell India by 2002!
K. Duraiswamy, on e-mail
Don Bradman was a good cricketer (Alone on Mount Olympus, March 12). But in our collective bid to confer sainthood on him, let’s not forget that he too was not averse to cheating. In the first Test of the 1946-47 mcc tour of Australia, he was clearly caught out by Jack Higgin but the umpire himself was unsure and left the decision to Bradman, who stood his ground.
Sorab Shroff, London
Anything in the hands of the government in India is bound to meet a tragic end (Transistor Bombs, March 5). More than the privatisation of radio, what is needed is proper organisation, quality programming, innovative ideas and more interactive programmes. Vocational training in radio-allied activities can be imparted in schools, like computers. After all, with convergence in the field of communication, the radio too offers unlimited potential.
Prasad Satkalmi, Vadodara
While you rightly name television and neglect as culprits, I feel our changing lifestyle too is responsible for the demise of the radio. Who in the cities has the time to listen to radio?
Bhaskar Sen, on e-mail
Unlike the mad scramble for broadcast slots on AM/MW frequencies, FM radio would allow several local stations to coexist—without interference—across India’s geocultural landscape. With economics and technology on radio’s side, it’s only our government and elitist policy planners who’re hampering the opening of community radio stations. Nor do they have any excuse for not opening low-cost educational radio stations in universities across the country.
Frederick Noronha, Goa
In her column Silence of the Lambs (March 5), Anita Pratap laments the deteriorating tolerance and the cult of hooliganism in our society. However, she need not have singled out the bjp and Shiv Sena for their acts; the other parties are no better. Everyone recalls the fate Deepa Mehta’s Water met but no one talks of the similar violence staged by Congressmen in Calcutta theatres showing Hey Ram!. If a party adhering to Gandhi’s ahimsa is capable of doing this, we don’t need Anita Pratap to tell us that intolerance has become inherent in our society.
Ritesh Ramesh, Chicago
The article Should He Kill His Wife? (March 5) made for very depressing reading. It only goes to show how mercenary, incompetent and unaccountable our medical system can be. Even more unfortunate, the judiciary and law-enforcing agencies never bother to prosecute doctors for the expensive mistakes they make at the cost of the lives of hapless patients who have nowhere else but them to go to.
Brian Pinheiro, Goa
It’s surprising that Ravi Dhawan, chief justice of the Patna High Court, should consider mercy killing ‘inhuman’. More inhuman is being condemned to live the life of a vegetable. Kanchan Devi should be allowed to die peacefully.
Anusheela Saha, Calcutta
It’s amazing that so much fuss was created over a prime ministerial knee and no action is being taken over the hapless plight of Kanchan Devi. MP chief minister Digvijay Singh has taken the initiative to conduct raids against fake doctors and quacks and take legal action against them. Why can’t other states follow suit?
Dilip Magee, on e-mail
Apropos Megahurtz...Scamming the Waves (February 26), it’s ridiculous that B.K. Zutshi, former vice-chairman of trai, should defend and act as spokesperson for the Cellular Operators’ Association of India, rather than talk of developments in India’s telecom sector. Let him once have a close look at India’s teledensity, a dismal 2.5 per 1,000.
Rajakumar B., Bangalore
Most cellular operators are the real culprits who try to influence the government with the support of magazines like yours to prey on consumers. These people seem to think radio spectrum is their ancestral property which no one else can use.
Ravikiran M., Hyderaba
Being a professional dancer, I take great pleasure in knowing Dr Sunil Kothari, who you unfortunately describe as a "fixer in art circles" (Backdoor Laurels, February 19). He’s one of the few art critics who’s done original research in classical art forms and even won a Sangeet Natak Akademi award.
Menaka P. Bora, Chennai
Reports like Who’s Immune to This Disease? (January 22) which question the role of foreign donors in fuelling aids fears may yet help India stave off a damaging epidemic of "hiv-testing". As former medical and science correspondent of the London Sunday Times, and author of aids: The Failure of Contemporary Science, I’ve covered the aids story for nearly 20 years. Having written about it from the conventional perspective for several years, I became convinced in 1991-92 that the science underpinning the "hiv" story was flawed. There is considerable evidence that the "hiv" test was never validated; that the very idea of "hiv" as a deadly new sexually transmitted virus, set to spread around the world, was wrong.
In the UK, where the problems with the test are understood, we have fewer than 30,000 people diagnosed positive out of a nation of 60 million. This figure is no different from 15 years ago, and is in sharp contradiction to predictions that by this time, millions would be infected here. Huge commercial interests are driving the "hiv" theory and blocking calls for a much-needed reappraisal of aids science.
Neville Hodgkinson,Oxford
Builders & Friends (February 19) brought to mind Aldous Huxley’s prophetic statement on India’s corrupt social structure during his second and last visit to India in 1961: "Only a moral earthquake can save India."
P.R. Krishna Narayanan, on e-mail
