The Railway Budget rightly places emphasis on security, technology, quality of service, cleanliness, better food service, connectivity and modernity. The Railways could certainly do with modernisation, cleanliness and security. Time-bound programmes should be chalked out and announced with regard to new projects. Rather than hurrying with the details and later rectifying them and losing public confidence it is better that the preparatory steps are given adequate attention before announcing them.

KU Mada

Mumbai

Tackle poverty

Counting the number of poor people may help the Government develop its strategy for dealing with poverty. But it must be done realistically, taking into account the minimum amount of money required for bare necessities. Pegging it at a paltry ₹32 a day in villages and ₹47 in towns and cities presents a distorted picture. Without in any way questioning the eminence of Suresh Tendulkar and C Rangarajan, it has to be said that the impossibility of subsisting on a pittance does not seem to occur to them. We aspire to become a superpower but we cannot achieve that with “the largest concentration of impoverished citizens on earth”.

G David Milton

Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu

The common man’s eatery, the Indian Coffee House in Kerala, charge ₹45 for a masala dosa weighing roughly about 100g and a tea without sugar. According to the report, if one enjoys this luxury on one day, he is rich. This is like theformer Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit saying that ₹600 a month was enough for a four-member family in Delhi to make ends meet

This sort of poverty classification is absurd. No one can live on ₹32 a day. There are better ways of drawing the poverty line These committees comprise only the rich and the influential and without representation from the poor, no committee can adequately decide on what constitute’s poverty.

K A Solaman

Alappuzha, Kerala

Build human resources

The finance minister should allocate more resources to education. Education expenses are not consumption expenditure; they are long-term investments. The Government should start more medical colleges. The country requires around 100,000 more doctors every year whereas only 35,000 doctors are created each year. We also need more funds for research and development.

S Raghunatha Prabhu

Alappuzha, Kerala

ATM skimming

As ATMs proliferate, cyber crimes are also set to increase. Skimming is the most prominent type of ATM crime apart from shouldering, phishing and capturing passwords through hidden cameras. It enables hackers to clone ATM cards. We must be vigilant.

M Vignesh

Madurai

Unseemly brawl

The BJP has little reason to deny the Congress-led UPA with 60 MPs its place as leader of the Opposition. Should the BJP harp on the count of 44 for the Congress as being inadequate to qualify, it can do so in all fairness by re-constituting a standalone BJP government with its 282 MPs. Further, to extend its logic, the BJP should shed ministers from allied parties. No doubt the Prime Minister enjoys a constitutional prerogative to choose his cabinet for optimum governance, but he and his party can serve the cause of truly democratic functioning by positioning without delay an LoP in the Lok Sabha.

R Narayanan

Ghaziabad

Top noise

A study has to be conducted to find out the decibel levels of Opposition members in Parliament. The noise level at fish markets don’t come anywhere near the level in Parliament. If shouting were any indication of a well-functioning parliamentary democracy, India would be second to none.

S Ramakrishnasayee

Ranipet, Tamil Nadu

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