Sane voice

This refers to ‘Arun Jaitley and his frenemies’ by Poornima Joshi (December 15). Jaitley is a credible voice of the BJP. To his credit, he had gamely put behind him the embarrassment of losing the parliamentary election by remarking there were bigger gains for the party. What is more important today is that the Prime Minister has confidence in him. He is a pragmatic politician and the government needs his sane voice.

CG Kuriakose

Kothamangalam, Kerala

Still paying the price

‘Why no Make in India for urea?’ by Sandip Sen (December 15) made interesting reading. But before we jump to any hasty conclusions, we must go back to the late 50s and early 60s, when a highly chemically extractive type of agriculture, conforming to the American farming model, euphemistically called the ‘green revolution’ was imposed on India. This type of farming depended on the heavy input of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, copious irrigation water, and, alien-gene inducted ‘dwarf’ wheat or rice genotypes, which were highly fertiliser responsive.

Massive fertiliser import took place from the US under cover of the ignominious PL 450 (public loan) ‘rupee repayment’ scheme of the Kennedy era. India became the dumping ground for American fertilisers. Though India had an alternate work plan for agriculture, with some brilliant and patriotic minds at the helm, it was not allowed to function. The rest is India’s agricultural history so far.

Most Indian farmers have become addicted to chemical fertilisers and they think they can compensate for costly potassic and phosphatic fertilisers by adding more urea to the soil, thus damaging soil fertility. India has no mineral reserves from which potassic fertilisers can be manufactured. Germany controls almost the whole of world’s reserve, the same is true of phosphatic fertilisers, where Central Africa holds the key.

Almost all vital decisions on fertiliser are made by bureaucrats or business leaders both with political clout. There are hardly any top soil scientists or agronomists at the helm who can help make wise, long-term decisions without abusing the soil, as happened in Punjab during the green revolution.

KP Prabhakaran Nair

Email

The RBI governor has rightly said that we should not go down the path of import substitution and in the process make our local producers uncompetitive. The government should listen to him and change its policy on urea and incentivise its production locally and save precious foreign exchange. Our farmers are already handicapped by not having farm insurance. The riskiest job in India at the moment is without doubt agriculture.

CR Arun

Email

Insensitive managers

It is unfair and illogical that some banks charge their customers with low balance on breaching the cap on ATM transactions. It is only such customers the government is reaching out to for financial inclusion. With just a few exceptions, bank managers generally tend to treat these customers as a burden and turn them away when they come to open zero balance PMJDY accounts, forgetting the business potential these accounts could bring to the banks in future.

The money and effort going into disseminating the benefits of PMJDY accounts will go waste unless managers are sensitised to the needs of village folk and the poor.

MA Khan

Chennai

Lots to learn

This refers to ‘26/11 and the fallacy of non-state actors’ by Prabhakaran Paleri (December 13).The article, coming from a former director-general of the Indian Coast Guard, should be taken note of by the authorities concerned. The investigating agencies working on detecting the working of the modules should update their operational strategies and revamp the organisation since terrorist modules employ various methods.

The investigating agencies should have separate departments to study the modules operating in different areas, such as maritime, border lines and within the country, and maintain close coordination among the different cells.

TR Anandan

Coimbatore

Shocking

As the well-coordinated efforts of UK’s M16 and Channel 4 helped Indian intelligence zero in on Mehdi Masroor Biswas, threats to the life of the police officer who led the operation points to the terror outfit’s greater designs and wider network in the region. While nabbing the techie averted ISIS’s plans to destabilise country’s internal security, we must continue to strengthen the security apparatus to surmount the newer challenges emanating from it. The use of digital media as a convenient tool to spread terror is shocking.

R Prabhu Raj

Chennai

Go for lending

The significant drop in inflation levels of food and manufacturing goods could be attributed to lower crude oil prices and changes in the utility basket of consumers as clearly reflected in the drop in onion prices and increase in protein rich items such as egg, meat and potatoes. But growth of 4.7 per cent warrants increased lending to stimulate more production to cover against dependence on externalities like crude oil prices.

Vikram Sundaramurthy

Chennai

Angry words

It is obvious that Mamata Banerjee is unable to digest the exponential growth of the BJP in West BengalWith the arrest of more and more elected representatives of her party by the police she is getting more and more furious.

When thousands of people have lost their hard-earned money in the Saradha chit fund scam, it is the duty of the Centre to step in and get the CBI to probe into the deal and punish the culprits. The wrongdoers have to undergo severe punishment. Turning heat on the BJP will not deter the CBI. She needs to desist from issuing irresponsible and insensitive statements.

HP Murali

Bengaluru

Help and punishment

Holding the app firm responsible for rape by a taxi driver is the right step, but this may be an isolated case. More control in the hands of the travelling public is the need of the hour, such as an alarm connected to the police control room or a loud siren for alerting the public, with the button near the passenger seat. But the moot question remains: Why do rapes occur so often?

Many a times it is momentary lust that results in the crime. Rapists need treatment in special institutions, education in all spheres of life, the strictest form of punishment and even social boycott.

Unfortunately, rapes take place daily across the country because there is no fear of law. It is the duty of the government to make every citizen respect and obey the law, and hand out stringent punishment to those who violate them.

Mahesh Kumar

New Delhi

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