Your cover story on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (A Nose for Politics, May 11) is a screaming example of how a fawning section of the media helps in firming up a dynasty whose present beneficiaries at least have no record of service to the people of India. Priyanka is a seasonal Congresswoman, coming out of her home every five years to canvass for votes for just her mother and brother. And yet she poses—in response to, say, Narendra Modi’s tasteless comparison of the Congress with an old woman, a burden on others—as the youthful personification of the Congress. Outlook’s reverential treatment of Priyanka is not sycophancy but idolatry, akin to the many roadside temples in Delhi where the pantheon of gods is fashioned out of cheap calendar cutouts.
Atin Gupta, on e-mail
When I read the headline ‘I met Robert when I was just 13’, I thought it was an interview with Ajit. Sadly, it was an interview with Priyanka where the interlocutor seemed completely in awe of her subject.
M.P. Sharma, Bangalore
Dear Mr Mehta, your subscribers are ready for a nice juicy cover story on ‘Editor’; he sounds like such an interesting character! We’re all tired of the saccharine interviews of the Congress first family.
Savitri Sawhney, New Delhi
Their modesty is the most endearing trait of the Gandhi siblings. Sonia Gandhi has brought up her children well.
Manish Banerjee, Calcutta
Journalism, Mills & Boon style!
Jai-Tej, Dubai
Priyanka’s like a breath of fresh air in the putrid air of Indian polity. More power to her.
Sabyasachi Ray, Calcutta
Why do you refer to Priyanka as Priyanka Gandhi? If she is Priyanka Gandhi, then Sonia should be Sonia Maino. If Sonia is Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka should be Priyanka Vadra.
S. Raghunatha Prabhu,
Alappuzha
Only Priyanka can restore some sanity in India.
S. Chatterjee, Calcutta
Another attempt by Outlook to build up the "family" as the country’s great white hope.
Rajiv Chopra, Jammu
I do not know whether empowered villagers will defeat terror in 15 minutes. But an empowered Rahul will surely destroy India in 15 months flat.
V.R. Ganesan, New Jersey
Sixty years of independence have been unable to erase the servility that thousands of years of subjugation have ingrained in our psyche. Hence the craven desire to prostrate ourselves before real or pseudo royalty. In this regard, we should perhaps follow the British who, while allowing the Queen to wear her crown and stay in her palace, ensure that she does not step out of the glass house of triviality they’ve built around her.
Shyamal Mukherji, Mumbai
Priyanka may say that she does not have it in her to become a politician, but there are two kinds of leaders, ones who’re born (like her grandmother) and others who’re made leaders by the people (like her parents). She falls in the first category even though she might not have realised her potential or pretends otherwise to deflect attention from her.
Ashwin, Jersey City
Why does Outlook have to interview a political non-entity who actually thinks her brother is making a difference and calls a person who barely scraped together a nominal MPhil "astute"!
Aneesh Vempati, Hyderabad
If Rahul is doing all what Priyanka says he is, then it’s exactly what needs to be done for the revival of the Congress. Brother and sister both come off well in this interview.
Anwar Patel, Dallas
Now that you’ve covered all the senior members of the family, will it be Priyanka’s kids next?
Hemanth D. Pai, Bangalore
What are Priyanka’s achievements other than being born to the right parents? I can imagine how badly she and her family "want to be left alone" in the posh sarkari house they’ve always lived in with Z-plus security. Who doesn’t want the perks of leadership without the toil of day-to-day politics? She is a hypocrite alright but even worse are the Congressis and journalists like you.
Ravi, Denver, US
Sheela Reddy’s nose must be longer than Priyanka’s after this piece.
S.S. Nagaraj, Bangalore
The Indian leadership’s double talk on ltte is disgusting (Project Tiger: The End, May 11). First and foremost, it is Sri Lanka’s internal affair as much as Kashmir is ours. So leave them to handle it the way they deem fit. The ltte has earned the annihilation that awaits it. The sooner the better.
Bhushan Giri, Richmond, US
Any kind of sympathy for the "Tamil cause" in the ongoing war in Sri Lanka is ill-advised and counterproductive. By stalling the Sri Lankan military operations, one directly or indirectly helps the ltte, which draws clandestine support in terms of manpower and resources from ‘interested’ parties of the Dravidian stock in India. There is no truth in the "partisan" struggle for Eelam which has never ever taken place, contrary to the "claims" of the "Tamil rebels".
K. Sethumadhavan, on e-mail
Col Karuna (Interview) to me seems just a Brutus ready to stab his masters in the back.
Mort, Bombay
If there is any one issue of Indian foreign policy that I agree with fully, it is the present one on the ltte. It separates innocent Tamils from the intransigent ltte. Post-ltte, the government of India should work carefully with Sri Lanka to secure equal rights for Tamils and increase its natural sphere of influence in the region through wise and prudent policies, not Big Brother bullying tactics.
Sandilya, Chennai
Has everyone forgotten that Sinhalas were the community that wanted to kill Rajiv Gandhi? Nobody seems to recall that it was a naval sailor who tried to kill Rajiv by hitting him with his rifle butt on July 30, 1987, soon after the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka accord.
D. Senthil Anand, Chennai
India made a huge mistake in supporting the Prachanda takeover in Nepal. It would repeat the mistake in Sri Lanka by advocating the cause of the Tamil Tiger terrorists for the sake of the doubtful support of political parties in volatile Tamil Nadu.
Narendra Vasireddi, Boston
Salman Haider’s concern that India remain engaged with Pakistan is touching (India, the Antiseptic, May 11). Could he enlighten us on what precisely this engagement should entail? Perhaps handing over Kashmir on a platter to Pakistan or another dramatic raid on India, this time somewhere in Delhi, followed by another round of diplomatic pap conducted on TV? It’s time to get real, Mr Haider. Pakistan is a menace to India and the civilised world as even its western benefactors have at long last realised.
Rohit K. Patel, London
Despite the many follies that afflict the Indian political system, I don’t think India will be driven by "age-old hatreds and narrow calculations", for there is too much at stake. One can only hope that the Indian establishment sees it that way. While there are many in India who’d like Pakistan to stew in its own juices, India’s best interests do lie in a stable democratic Pakistan. However, for that to happen, the Pakistanis need to get over their pathological hatred towards India.
Anil Kotwal, Adelaide
Any suggestion that India should withdraw its troops from the border to enable the Pakistani army to go after the Taliban should be treated with caution. What India can do is to give an assurance that its army will not cross the border if the Pakistani army is diverted from their side.
V. Seshadri, Chennai
For many reasons, including India, the Pak army is not interested in engaging with the Taliban. It has three options: to do nothing, do enough to keep them away from the important places or clean them out completely. I guess Pakistan is following the second option. Be that as it may, it is not possible for the Taliban to take over Pakistan. The Taliban derives its force from the Pashtuns and they are not a majority in Pakistan. It will be very difficult for the others to join forces with them due to differences between them.
Arun Prakash, on e-mail
Does India really want to play any role in resolving the existential crisis faced by Pakistan? If ‘yes’, the implications are simple: Pakistan will use the Indians, and then go back to its old game of salami-slicing India through terrorism, pumping fake currency and fomenting discontent among Indian Muslims.
Gypsycapt, Los Angeles
I don’t think 24/7 news channels are overdosing the viewer (Political Soap in Our Eyes, May 11). Instead, in this season of scorching heat, these channels are the best sources of election updates.
Manoj Parashar, Greater Noida
Apropos Sashi Kumar’s column The Good Voter Schweik most political "anchors" in the English media have massive egos and think they can change public opinion. More news traders than news reporters, they present their own point of view rather than actual news. What we miss are the newspapers with a bite like the Indian Express in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s with strong editors who were ready to take on the establishment and change the political course.
Vibhaas, Doha, Qatar
Whatever Pawar might say (Interview, May 11), he has been nursing prime ministerial ambitions for 30-odd years now. He has money power and caste support that gains him influence in a small region of Maharashtra, but it’s not enough capital for prime ministership. But if he does go around seeking it, he may well get it the way H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral did.
Ramesh Raghuvanshi, Pune
What was the Outlook cover story Metier Gauge (May 4) all about? An excuse to highlight Rahul and Sonia Gandhi’s tireless efforts to uplift the poor masses? We all know that what’s shown as achievement is merely an eyewash—none of it is the sort of real development that will sustain itself after these MPs are gone.
Ameet Bhuvan, Bhubaneswar
It’s painful to see how most of the top 15 leaders score low on bringing bijli, sadak and pani to their constituents.
Ravi Rawal, on e-mail
Despite the campaigns to get people to vote, the voter turnout has been lacklustre. All parties have blamed their rivals. If they’re all telling the truth, they’re all unworthy. And if what they say is false, they are all barefaced liars. The other irony: a majority of our population is below 35 years of age but we’ll be ruled by people over 70 years.
B. Gopalakrishnan, on e-mail
It’s heartening to learn that some nomadic tribes of Gujarat have acquired voter ID cards long denied to them (Roaming Rights, May 11). But our system is not exclusionary: there is an existing system for postal ballot, which could be streamlined to make it easier for people to vote.
Dr R.N. Kohli, New Delhi
Apropos of Neelabh Mishra’s Great Neptune’s Ocean (May 11), it’s quite clear that prima facie, there’s a case for contempt of court proceedings against Arun Jaitley—if only the Supreme Court decides to proceed against him.
S. Ray, on e-mail
The 2002 riots in Gujarat have become a convenient stick in the hands of busybody activists, politicians and journalists like Neelabh Mishra to beat Narendra Modi with. Why don’t they realise that there was no police action during the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, while 200 Hindus were killed in police firing in the Gujarat riots. And Mr Mishra must know that a former police officer of Gujarat who happens to be a Muslim recently joined the BJP with other members of the community.
Bharat Trivedi, on e-mail
Mr Mishra is a good writer but thoroughly biased. I buy Arun Jaitley’s view that the Gujarat riots and secular slogans are raised by politicians and their people in the ngos whenever there’s an election.
Bharat Tiwari, New Delhi
Excellent article. Modi will meet his Waterloo if not in this life, certainly in the afterlife.
Anupam Dasgupta, Jaipur
Mr Mishra’s statement that the "attitude Jaitley has displayed is quite in keeping with that his party has shown to key democratic institutions" indicates that the columnist is blind to Congress actions. After all, it was the Congress that proclaimed an Emergency and saw through the appointment of Navin Chawla as the next chief election commissioner against the current cec’s advice.
Akil, on e-mail
Mr Mishra’s views are naive and outlandish; his views on the BJP wholly biased, baseless and akin to the signature tunes of pseudo-secularists.
S.P. Pandey, on e-mail
There’s a terrible disconnect between what Mr Mishra writes about (the murder of minorities by so-called Hindu fanatics) and the smile on his face in the photo that goes with his column. That’s a photo more suited to a column about, say, nudist beaches.
C.P. Narendran, Nagpur
Narayana Murthy would make a good politician: he scores high on the hypocrisy graph (Interview, Apr 20). He often says that the government must not give the IT sector tax rebate but it’s just lip service. The Karnataka government gave him land at subsidised rates but when the government wanted his advisory support for the airport project, he pulled out, citing interference. Public service, Mr Murthy, is not as easy as planting Korean grass on Infosys lawns. He says Indians are great speakers but poor executors. It could well apply to him. Mr Murthy is just a successful businessman; don’t make an icon out of him.
Mukund, on e-mail
The Domestic Violence Act is clearly designed to protect the interests of women, but it is flawed in that it’s too generalised and gives scope for unscrupulous women to use it for exploiting their husbands (There’s Room for Her, May 11).
Mahantesh C. Karadigudda, on e-mail
Namrata Joshi’s delightful piece Sirens of Malewood (May 11) shows that Malegaon’s spoof cinema is more inventive and organised than Bollywood. Filmmaker Nasir is its Dada Phalke.
Aparajita Krishna, Mumbai
There’s enough guilt in my overprivileged life without having to hear Nandini Mehta’s confidences about how hard our class has it (Delhi Diary, May 11). She humiliates a (hypothetical, I hope) correspondent in Jhanjharpur for his unintelligible English, while dummy-bombing the same sentence with an awkward French figure of speech. If that isn’t discomfiting, wait for it. Now she complains about expats raising the wage-expectations of domestic help and making beggars act entitled. "They’re hitting us below the belt," she says, "right in our pockets." Shortly before informing us, from a concealed position in the chatterati but not of it, that "the snobometer has now decreed Tuscany as passe and declasse". Oh please! Holding up a mirror to upper-class hypocrisy is good, but I don’t know which side is reality and which is satire, and neither, from the sound of it, does Ms Mehta.
Som, Mumbai
Vinod Mehta may worship Khushwant Singh but I think he’s Hypocrite No. 1 (Delhi Diary, Apr 20). Any respect I have for him is for his age. He says he’s a non-believer but wears his turban religiously. He writes unabashedly about sex but behaves like a puritan at home. Worse, he criticises people after they’re dead. He called R.K. Narayan’s gentle humour tiresome, but his own brand of humour makes him the world’s worst joke writer.
Ralph Rodrigues, Bangalore
