Auto sector pains

With reference to ‘Auto sector stares at job cuts…’ (July 11), the sector needs to understand the dynamics of the industry beyond what they call ‘slowing economy’, ‘low consumer sentiment’, etc. In reality we do not need so many cars anymore. We have too many already, causing massive traffic snarls in cities. The growing numbers of people are preferring cabs and shared services. With this, utilisation per car has gone up manifold (10 to 12 hours per day) against private car use (2 to 3 hours per day). Add to it the problems of parking, driving hassles and disposing of end of life vehicles. Soon we could have motorbike taxis with much higher hours per day utilisation. We will then need fewer two-wheelers.

Pune

With reference to the news report ‘Will continue to focus on Make in India, says LG’ (July 11), the Modi led government should have a broader outlook to successfully implement the ‘Make in India’ scheme.

The government should follow the Silicon valley principle where the entrepreneur is respected. The government should remove the bottlenecks for entrepreneurs and facilitate business/innovation.

The government should rope in successful entrepreneurs to motivate other budding entrepreneurs. Innovations can never take shape if there is government/political interference. It is also a sad commentary that the Silicon valley is dominated by Indians. For this is brain drain successive governments and their policies should be blamed. Narendra Modi should change this scenario. Merely having schemes like ‘Make in India’ or ‘Make for India’ will not serve the purpose. Concrete steps should be taken to encourage entrepreneurs.

Thane

With reference to ‘Borrow abroad, but with caution’ (July 11), for years sovereign borrowing was on agenda but stymied by conflict of views between the government and the RBI.

At some cost to the autonomy of the central bank this route has now been taken. Given the ruling factors of the day, while the borrowing may not come cheap, it serves the critical purpose of reducing the government’s call on domestic savings, which should translate to lower domestic interest rates and broadly support the economy, particularly exports. The Economic Survey had earlier underscored the need to back exports with “a competitive exchange rate”.

Sovereign bonds were mooted as early as July 2013, when the rupee was at its lowest ever. Today indices towards its risk assessment are in far better shape for the issue of the bonds.

The resultant cache of forex could come in handy against external political or monetary aberrations. As it is, our non-resident holding of government debt is low even amongst the fiscally better positioned BRIC bloc.

Navi Mumbai

With reference to ‘POCSO Act amended: Death penalty for child sex abuse’ (July 11), such a move was long awaited in the wake of nationwide highly worrisome scenario on this front.

However, it also goes without saying that mere enactment of the proposed stringent laws under this Act may not serve the real purpose unless they are ‘honestly and dutifully’ implemented by various law enforcing agencies. Are we not aware of very poor ‘conviction’ rate even in such ghastly and most deplorable cases?

But, do such a sorry state of affairs not obviously put a question mark on the style of functioning of our police authorities? Shouldn’t the police authorities be more accountable to the public?

Bengaluru

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