Your compilation on calm karmayogis made interesting reading (25 People Who Will Never Make It To The Power List, Apr 23). It gave the reader some idea of a small but silent (and admirably so) section of the population engaged in the noble act of serving humanity. What makes this write-up all the more important is that it restores our sense of balance—of looking at things around. The mere knowledge of the existence of such samaritans itself reassures us that our world is not just about the weddings of film stars or even the decadence of politicians. We get to know of a set of socially responsible, constructive, diligent and committed people fighting all odds—quietly, selflessly.
Kalpana Kannabiran, Secunderabad
Wonderful work, only that you got a crucial word wrong in the headline. It should have started as ‘25 Men’ instead of ‘25 People’. True, there is one woman in the list, but even she shares the slot with her husband. What does this say to your readers about the status of women in India?
Randall Giles, Chennai
I went through each thumbnail sketch, read every word about the achievements of each personality. As much as their services, what struck me was that out of of the 25 people, I knew only one. My compliments.
Harish Jagtiani, Bangalore
Heart-warming cover. Outlook stands like a lone oak in a mediocre shrubland of magazines.
D.N. Banerjee, Uttarpara, Hooghly
Congratulations, but wasn’t it professional rivalry that brought the best out of you?
Amitabh Thakur, Lucknow
Now that Outlook has highlighted the silent services of a set of samaritans, we all should give them a chance to make it to the power list. Else, it will be our bad luck, not theirs.
Shailesh Kumar, Bangalore
The lives of these people are so purposeful and inspiring that I would even suggest the government models its welfare programmes on such lines. That will be a well-deserved tribute to their tenacious services.
Bapty Seshasayee, Chennai
I am sure your article would serve as a booster to many such people working for social causes and improving the lives of the underprivileged.
U.S. Aroon, Mumbai
Let this be a watershed issue for Outlook. Let glitz no more find space in your pages.
Kaushik Dutta, Calcutta
Your list doesn’t end here for sure. I expect occasional—if possible, regular—sequels to it. They would be enlightening.
B.K. Chatterjee, Faridabad
An NRI, I felt proud of my compatriots. It’s not just that these people work for the marginalised communities. They are themselves marginalised!
S. Nassar, Raleigh, US
Most of the people listed belong to your editor’s favourite class—the Leftists. That said, I must concede I like
P. Sainath and Jean Dreze.
Shri Prasad, Hyderabad
It could have been great if you widened the vista of the list beyond individuals. And included organisations—the Ramakrishna Mission and the Arya Samaj. That would have made it look more holistic.
Ganpat Ram, Haridwar
The fact that no woman has made it to your list is proof to their actual invisibility—especially when the whole piece professes to portray people living out of limelight. Hopefully you will do one of those ‘Female Power In The Shadows’ kind of list as a corrective.
Niharika Dinkar, New York
Sadly, you missed out Praful Bidwai, Arundhati Roy, Shabana Azmi, Medha Patkar, Neelima Deshpande, Sandeep Pandey, Teesta Setalvad and Rajmohan Gandhi.
Dr Zafar Iqbal, Germantown, US
And also Aruna Roy, Mahasweta Devi, Indira Jaisingh, Bina Agarwal, Mira Nair.... Oh, but then they are all women.
H.S., Boalburg, US
Wasn’t it intentional that you excluded women?
S. Rohit, Dubai
The inclusion of Dr Rani Bang—the sole woman in your list—as wife of Dr Abhay itself is proof to your sexist attitude.
Anjali Singh, New Delhi
You could think of no woman? Now, that’s really bewildering!
Salil Tripathi, London
Mercifully, Vinod Mehta has, in his introductory edit, made a confession. Having conceded the trivial nature of media surveys to make rolls of honour to highlight the bright and the best of the country, he has made the same folly and makes no bones about it. His apology carries no conviction. This time too, the outcome makes no sense for the reader.
Gyan Ranjan Saha, Calcutta
It’s reassuring when you say the power list syndrome is a dumbing down of the media. Doesn’t it go for your ‘scientific’ opinion polls and surveys?
Ramana Murthy, Hyderabad
The word ‘centre-left’ is vital in Mr Mehta’s edit. He implies that the right wing is incapable of doing good work. This, when the rss has done more than the rest of the ngos combined during times of national calamity.
V.R. Ganesan, New Jersey
No, Mr Mehta, you needn’t be apologetic about the list at all.
S. Vidyadhar, Hyderabad
Your article Italian Jobs (April 16) celebrates the work of the tcs team in the development of Ferrari. However, this is not the first or the only time Indians have been part of mega projects or high-profile assignments. Railway engineers have been part of the Taiwan high-speed railway line (at one time the largest infrastructure investment in the world), and over the past eight years, hordes of railway engineers have been members of the design team for state-of-the-art signalling projects in UK. So much so that during 1998-2002, the British government had a special class of work permits for railway engineers from India which were processed and issued within
2-3 weeks. But then railway engineering isn’t as glamorous as IT, and they certainly don’t have the kind of PR skills that a tcs would have.
S. Srivastava, Secunderabad
Once pils were a means to correct socio-economic injustices. Now they are nothing but a source of harassment, as Fali S. Nariman rightly points out in his column Busybodies Hazir Ho (Apr 23). Publicity-seeking litigations, they do nothing more than waste the precious time of the courts and have become more a weapon of vengeance. Rather than encourage these wasteful exercises, the courts would do well to restrain such practices and concentrate on clearing the backlog of genuine cases.
Pachu Menon, Margao, Goa
India’s "temple of justice" was not much of a temple. It was just an instrument to maintain "order" (not "law and order") in colonial times. Hence the lack of lower courts, the backlogs, and the culture of inefficiency. The bureaucracy was the lower court (thus the term "district magistrate" for the erstwhile district tax collector). If you had a problem with a bureaucrat, you appeared before another bureaucrat, often in the same office—just like in China today. If you had a problem with the collector sahib himself—such as the taxes his department had assessed—tough luck. Why doesn’t the Supreme Court/ high court prosecute the judge whose decisions seem to be motivated by political interests? Today, pils are one of the few avenues for citizens to get justice, at least when a large number of them have been wronged. Doing away with pils will remove even this slim hope for justice. The prime minister was within his rights to talk of "judicial overreach". Parliament has the right to define the function of the judiciary. However, if the prime minister really wants to restrict the judiciary, he should draft legislation or constitutional amendments as needed, not just threaten the judiciary. It would be far better if the government spent a small fraction of its budget to create a functioning judiciary, specially lower courts with judge/population ratio similar to other countries. The rest of the problems will get resolved or diminish in significance once we have a functioning judiciary.
Ashish K., Cambridge, US
Dear Dr Manmohan Singh, you are aware of the grievous power shortage in our country. Yet we ignore the rich potential of working as per daylight saving hours as practised in the US and Australia. There is a time difference between Assam-nefa and Kutch-Saurashtra of about 21/2-3 hours; one sees no earthly reason for observing a single ist schedule for the whole country. If all regions reschedule their work as per daylight available to them and not one insensitive time for the whole nation, we’ll have enough saving instantly to spare the surplus for starved regions of the north and Maharashtra. Remember the system in the war years? One decision and notification would move the country into a better power utilisation with immediate effect. One creative step like this would further deepen your name in history, not that it’s very important to you personally.
N.K. Somani, MP (4th Lok Sabha), on e-mail
There is one simple reason why we are condemned to live in the dark ages in India: wanton theft of power generated (mildly termed as transmission and distribution losses), and the political expediency of distributing ‘free’ power to farmers (Zero Watt in my Bulb, Apr 23). Is it possible not to charge for more than half of the power generated and still have money left to invest in new capacity? I think not, given the financial conditions of most of our electricity boards. The Electricity Act 2003 made power tradeable, but the Left made sure it did not come into force. What other alternative do we then have but to live with power cuts?
Rohit Choudhary, London
The present power shortage is because of the lack of proper planning and timely investment on projects. Unless we have time-frames for projects, we’ll continue to suffer. Maharashtra and Mumbai once boasted of being power-rich. Now they too have gone the Bihar way. Alternate sources of power are our only hope.
Vinod, Bangalore
Markandey Katju is quite right when he says "there seems to be a total literary vacuum" and that "in India, cricket really is the opium of the masses" (Art for Their Sake, Apr 23). One wonders whether the fiery enthusiasm to rise and fight against social evils as depicted by humanists like Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Tagore, Kabir, Premchand is dormant or missing entirely in today’s writers. There is a dire need to revamp and increase the circulations of Hindi and regional language magazines and reach out to the masses. Rather than Page 3 glossies, we need some serious and effective literature that mirrors the plight of the poor and the middle classes. We tend to underestimate the power of the pen and the creative genius of revolutionaries. But the question remains: are there any of this kind or are they and their works nowhere to be seen or read?
Girija Suri, on e-mail
In these celebrity-obsessed times, of which Outlook itself is not such an unwilling votary, it was strange to see Outlook get the Miss India wrong (Glitterati, Apr 23). It was Puja Gupta, not Sarah Jane Dias, who was crowned Miss India 2007. Puja Gupta will represent our country for the Miss Universe pageant; Sarah Jane will do so for the Miss World contest.
Nitish Jain, on e-mail
We regret the error—Editor.
For God’s sake, Mr Mehta, don’t go on writing stuff like "Corrupt judges, high-handed judges..." (Delhi Diary, Apr 23). They are all we have against politicians. If this last line is breached, the political thugs will run amok.
Radhanath Varadan, Hanoi
Good commentary—Vinod stands tall in the journalistic community. But fear of the courts of law seems to have taken the sting off his piece.
Nafay Kumail, New Delhi
Vinod Mehta goes around soaking free booze at parties which "senior cabinet ministers and vvips of the Congress party were slated to attend". Does he, while partaking of the free liquor and dinner, think of the poor languishing in the streets of Delhi, on whose unenviable fate he feeds like a vulture to justify his columns.
Abhi, Bangalore
I have searched high and low within official Delhi for a clear definition of vip/vvip, and failed consistently. However, your "official snifter" has finally given me the perfect expansion: "Very Very Imbibed Person". It may well be apt, now that official Delhi has legitimised booze for vips and vvips.
Veeresh Malik, New Delhi
Mr Mehta, if you have the privilege of drinking at very official, very formal dinners, then your readers at least have the right to know whose guest you have been.
Ashok Mathur, New Delhi
If your choice of drink reveals what kind of person you are, Mr Mehta stands exposed. Carrot juice or mousambi juice is for the aam aadmi. For elites like him, it’s either champagne or Johnnie Walker.
Rajeev, New Delhi
"Abominable carrot juice", Mr Mehta? Just add 30 ml Red Square vodka to a glass of carrot juice and tell me if you still find it abominable.
Sudhir K. Bisht, New Delhi
Outlook is reading more and more like a mouthpiece of the Left with each issue of late. Pray, what was Mr Mehta doing in Venice? Holidaying with the Karats, was it!
Baldev S. Chauhan, Shimla
Bang-on assessment of Greg Chappell! He made perfect use of the centuries-old "divide and rule" policy.
V. Rakhecha, Calcutta
Greg Chappell is indeed a master politician. It’s surprising he actually chided the Indian team for their defeat and got away scot free. If either of the Chappells (Ian or Greg) makes another comment about our players, it’s "chappals" for them.
S. Seshagiri, Chennai
Hoping once again to read about Editor or some other canine in the last section, I was disappointed, but consoled myself that the title for that end-piece sounded like "Lady with the Poodle".
K.R. Nagesh, Bangalore
What sort of a review was Dileep Padgaonkar’s (Books, Apr 23)? Wonder whose mind is really warped, his or M.S. Golwalkar’s? Did he really have to spew all that venom?
Shubhang S., New Delhi
In our article Coaching Factories are Dumbing Down the IITs (Apr 30), Prof M.R. Madhav is said to be from IIT Madras. He is in fact from IIT Kanpur. The error is regretted.
