It’s shocking that an iconic actor like Amitabh Bachchan should resort to forging of records in his bid to qualify as—of all things—a farmer (Reel Estate, Jun 18)! And that too, ploughing through the lives of genuine ryots. Is it all in anticipation of the virtuous, wronged hero turning villainous on screen? Just one thing: is Amar Singh Sambha to the new Gabbar, or is it vice versa?
Sarajeet Kanungo, Calcutta
Bachchan, a bete noire of the Gandhis, naturally translates into one for Outlook as well. In sycophancy, logic and fair play are the first casualties. If your story is about illegally acquired land, I can list dozens of big names. Among them, surely, a few undeserving Nehru scions too.
M. Ashok Raipet, Secunderabad
The real story about AB that hasn’t been put under scrutiny is how he went from bankruptcy to the huge furtunes he flaunts now. And the kind of help his best chums offered AB to get him out of bad times.
K. Kitchlu, Mysore
It’s time we boycotted Bachchan. Though it’s no easy task—he stares at us from all quarters: movies, the telly, billboards, newspapers, pens, chocolates...
Sunil K. Poolani, Mumbai
The UP assembly elections are over, and suddenly skeletons have started tumbling out from the cupboard. Clearly, this ‘land scam’ is just a manifestation of the usual political vendetta that flares up every time a new regime takes over. After all, we know well how clean the new chief minister of that state herself is.
G.S. Rao, Kolhapur
If the bsp government is keen to book the accused in this scam, we welcome it. We just hope they extend this ethical bit to the past misdeeds of Mayawati and her cronies. From the looks of it, the AB story is more about politics than crime.
Vineet Bhalla, Bhilai
Where Amitabh erred hugely after the abcl debacle was when it came to finding political patronage. The megastar accepted roles in weird films, anchored a popular TV show, appeared in stupid ads—all that was okay. Until he found a friend in the Samajwadi Party and its ring of corrupt leaders.
Nirad P. Pandya, Vadodara
There’s only one way Amitabh can regain his lost glory now: act—and do nothing else.
A.K. Ajmani, New Delhi
It’s a big story you have broken, but one that warrants a follow-up. Outlook can now activate an investigative team that would research and unearth all undeserved landgrabs across the nation. You can use the Right to Information Act to its hilt in accessing details—it’ll be great if you ignore party labels. This could lead to a campaign to free the lands and restore them to their original owners. All this, adhering to a time-frame.
S. Soundararajan, Portsmouth, UK
Let’s not skirt one point in the heat of accusing Bachchan. Can’t anybody opt to become a farmer? Is it that one’s forefathers have to be agriculturists for somebody to buy a farm land? If so, shouldn’t children of farmers be stopped from venturing into other lines? Why is it a one-way law? The answer is simple. The landed gentry wants to remain rich and powerful—holding on to its property. This law is a vestige from the feudal era.
T.R. Ramaswami, Mumbai
When industrialists are allowed to acquire thousands of acres of farmland to set up sezs, why this bar on non-agriculturists? A classic case of administrative double standards.
K.P. Rajan, Mumbai
Wonder why anybody would want to buy land in such a far-flung outpost like Daulatpur! Time Bachchan changed his financial consultant.
A. Thadhani, Ahmedabad
What a cruel irony that the dates of his land allotment have been shown to be between January 11 and February 11, 1983. That was only months after the whole nation had prayed for Bachchan’s recovery from a near-fatal injury he’d suffered.
Sunil Nagar, Mumbai
Bachchan only proves there is a national pattern to this kind of crime. In my hometown, Chennai, land pirates evict poor, hapless people by fudging documents in collusion with registration officials. Invariably, the grabbers are rich, with political patronage.
T. Sathyamurthi, Folsom, US
I’m all for exposing crime. Now that Amitabh has been bared, Outlook should train its guns on the travesty of the Q case.
V.R. Ganesan, New Jersey
All his pujas and havans in various temples across the country have failed to work. Evidently, bahu Aishwarya hasn’t brought good luck to Bachchan.
S. Balakrishnan, Jamshedpur
Dharmatma in reel life. Don in real life. How very filmi!
Anil Bansal, New Delhi
Forget all that legal reform, those goody-goody clauses (The IPC 2008, Jun 18). Anything which affects the bread and butter of the majority stakeholders (the "system") will be strongly resisted. The minority stakeholder, the poor litigant, is anyway ignored. For rich litigants, as is proved everyday, all this is just incidental. If things must change, everything should be on the Net—proceedings, adjournment reasons, judgements. And the rti act should be applicable to all.
Arun, Mumbai
It’s strange that increasing the size of the judiciary is not a priority. Also, corruption cases against lawmakers and keepers must be a fast, open process with a bench of three judges (so that buying them off is that much more difficult) dealing with it exclusively.
Ashish K., Cambridge, US
A weak dollar may be great for the consumer, but can we withstand pressure from the US and export lobby (Betcha Bottom Dollar, Jun 18)? The Centre must not succumb but it also has to stop a further fall in dollar value. This could be the recipe for a healthy economy.
V.V. Subramanian, Chennai
The problem is more complex. How much of the dip in international demand is attributable to its replacement by other currencies and not-so-visible barter arrangements? Is that what’s affecting dollar value fluctuations? For instance, while the euro-dollar favours the former now, yen-dollar bends towards the latter. The yuan—capped as it is at artificially low values—affecting the dollar is not on, despite the US’ huge BoP issues. High time the "economists" did some number-crunching, came out with the facts.
K.S.C. Nair, Indianapolis, US
Apropos X-Rated News (Jun 18), slotting our staid news and chat shows into U, UA & A brackets will be quite annoying. Now, if we had an Indian version of say, The Naked News, one could understand the need for it.
Deepak Suri, New Delhi
P.R. Das Munshi has always been trigger-happy, remember the battle with Nimbus over sharing feed with DD and the "public interest" bill. Shutting out the viewer will never work, as a General next door has found out. But then ours is a democracy. Or it was, last time I checked....
Sandeep Raul, Mumbai
The review of Military Inc (Jun 18) should have focused more on how the business activities of the Pakistan army affects battle-readiness, as also their thinking on long-term strategy vis-a-vis relations with India.
Vijay, Chennai
I’ve always wondered at the contours of economic debate in Pakistan. In India, people have agonised over how we did not join the path of the high growth Asian tigers earlier. The belief, with some validity, was that India relied too much on the state and public sector. It had inherent defects, but what is Pakistan’s excuse? They are no Tiger economy and our gain, self-sufficiency, too seems a faraway goal. What happened?
Varun Shekhar, Toronto
Regarding Totem and Taboo (May 28), everybody has a right to "create" as per his or her whims and fancy, but what is made public must have public approval. Regarding our ancient erotic sculptures, do these artists represent that era or do they want us to go back there? What everyone must understand is that context is important while interpreting heritage.
Dr Ashish Bhatnagar, Ajmer
In The Cosmic Takkar (Jun 11), Maulik Parikh has referred to the most recent instance, that of comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter in July ’94. But it’s surprising that not a single comet has collided with the many moons orbiting Jupiter. So can we predict whether a comet could collide with a moon or not? In the case of Jupiter, there’s an additional complication, as some moons (prograde) orbit the planet in the normal/forward direction and others in the opposite direction (retrograde moons). It’s obviously a theoretical challenge also.
Dileep V. Sathe, Pune
Apropos An Evening With The Bhuttos (Jun 18), is Outlook now the organ of dynasties everywhere?
Ghulam Y. Faruki, New York
Outlook sucks up to yet another royal family.
B. Bhattacharyya, Morrisville, US
My my VM, our ‘trillionaires’ the ‘filthy rich’ (Delhi Diary, Jun 11)? Why no happiness in our stock value, the India Shining measure, going up?
M.V.V.P. Reddy, Jamnagar
In Well, I Nether (Jun 10), Khushwant got the wrong end of the tract. What he went through was a colonoscopy. Endoscopy is when the tube is pushed down the throat, less embarrassing but more frightening.
Brig Lakshman Singh (retd), on e-mail
Yeah, the details were yucky, but Veerji added the typical "buggered" humour. Keep it up, sir.
Arif Jameel, Dubai
It wasn’t funny or informative. Had it not been by a prolific writer, I wouldn’t have bothered reading the whole page.
Devika, Ahmedabad
I wouldn’t be surprised if Khushwant has his own obituary ready (lest readers have to read one written by someone else). Luckily he’s well now, and looks set to cross the century mark.
Tarlok Singh, New Delhi
