NPS in rural India

This is with reference to the article ‘Promoting NPS in rural India’ (October 26). In developed countries, people are taken care of from cradle to grave. In India which has little social security, the majority of the senior citizens rely on their children.

The increase in life expectancy, ageing population, and decline in the traditional family structure are playing havoc with senior citizens. India does not have a universal pension program for its aging population. It has been gathered that our pension system currently ranks 32 out of 37 countries on the Global Pension System Ranking. This clearly indicates the inadequacy and urgent need to streamline and strengthen the pension programs/schemes in the country.

As India will be adding more people to its senior citizen category, it is important to extend the social security safety net for all senior citizens.

Veena Shenoy

Thane

It refers to ‘Promoting National Pension Scheme in rural India’. Given that both Jan Dhan Yojana and smartphone penetration has increased manifold in rural India, it is all the more imperative that we should leverage this strong base of people to provide them access to the National Pension scheme.

Digital connectivity and financial inclusion are gaining significant ground in our country and deeper NPS subscriber penetration will make it more meaningful. Services of banking correspondents and postal service can be availed to create a larger NPS subscriber base.

Bal Govind

Noida

Airlines conundrum

Apropos, “Will aviation industry turn profitable as it heads towards duopoly?,” (October 26), it is tough to make money in India’s aviation market unless the airline has scale, is nimble, and very hard-nosed in cost control.

Indian skies are nothing, but an enigma. It has lured many a billionaire who have burnt their fingers. The market has always struggled with high costs, as it is not considered a necessity but a luxury service, while this has changed to a certain extent, the cost base has only gone up, not to forget ATF charges and airport related charges.

Now, with almost 90 per cent of the aviation market firmly under the control of Air india and IndiGo, they have the distinct advantage of shaping up the aviation sector over the next few years.

N Sadhasiva Reddy

Bengaluru

War on inflation

This refers to the Pocket cartoon on the ongoing war on inflation (October 26).

Hats off to the proactive Cartoonist for showing the plight of consumers by equating it with our ever rising defence expenditure.

While the ‘official’ data may be presenting a highly ‘rosy’ picture on the retail price front but the fact also remains that the actual situation at ground zero may be quite different.

Intriguingly, the retail prices of various basic food crops as also pulses and cereals are high, under the protective cover of the govt supported MSP regime, not to talk of various luxury items, consumed mainly by the upper middle class and the rich strata of the Indian society. Needless to say, the price situation is making a deep hole in people’s pockets.

SK Gupta

New Delhi

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