Letters to the editor dated Oct 2, 2019

Cooperative banks are a way of distribution of financial services and a tool for reaching out to customers in rural and semi-urban areas. Challenging economic dynamics call for innovative addressable systems, and our country has covered huge ground on innovative digital banking in the last five years. Auditors should go to multiple cooperative banks for audits. Not only will it give them wider exposure, but will also enable them to to flag alarming signals with better precision. Further, all cooperative banks’ auditors should have half-yearly training sessions, where they are presented with dummy cases of financial discrepancies and messy accounts. Similarly, RBI auditors also could go through the same training with dummy balance sheets of cooperative banks to trace diversion of funds and unscrupulously covered accounts, which explode like minefields when not attended to on time. Educating auditors with innovative exercises would strengthen their capabilities.

Vadodara

The report about a student who attempted impersonation at the NEET examination to gain admission in medical college has made headlines in the media. What is disturbing is the revelation of more cases of this objectionable method being adopted by students in collusion with their parents.

Ideally, the parents should have displayed a sense of morality and honesty and prevented the children from pursuing such obnoxious and criminal methods. The incident has revealed a new route of criminality which should be noted by the government and stern preventive action should be initiated. Schools should be institutions for cultivation of honesty and morality in students, and a proper check of the same should be made at intervals.

Coimbatore

Apropos ‘BJP is far removed from Gandhi’s legacy of inclusivity’ (October 2). The BJP, and in particular Narendra Modi, appropriated Mahatma Gandhi’s name but not his ideology. Gandhi is quoted on for Swacch Bharat, but not for communal harmony.

But then, the Mahatma was against corruption, but it was during the Congress regime that it was at its peak. The tragedy is that even as Gandhi’s own countrymen are failing to honour him properly, the world is appreciating how his teachings can improve the quality of human race. His statues in different parts of the globe reflect sincere admiration for him, unlike in India, where garlanding his statues and recalling his values have been reduced to an annual ritual.

Pune

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that by 2100, oceans all over the world will absorb 5-7 times more heat than they have done in the past 50 years if we do not reduce our emissions trajectory, and this would lead to an increase in the sea level rising by at least one metre submerging several coastal cities like Chennai, Kolkata and Surat cannot be taken in a lighter vein.

Given the proven inextricable link between hotter oceans and stronger cyclones and storms, the international community cannot afford to remain oblivious to their imperative need in meeting its pledged carbon emissions reduction targets under the Paris climate pact.

That warming seas has changed and are changing cyclonic behaviour; a recent example being Cyclone Ockhi (2017), which originated in Bay of Bengal, travelled more than 2,000 km to wreak havoc on India’s western coast. This is a grim reality we are ignoring at our own peril.

With climate change-deluge now becoming a norm than an exception in several parts of the globe, our focus needs to turn towards creating resilient infrastructure to withstand and mitigate destruction unleashed by it.

Sholavandan

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