Citizens’ welfare

This is with reference to the editorial ‘After Ayodhya’ (November 11). The court has ruled in favour of construction of a Ram temple, which will begin shortly. Along with the Ram temple, let us also usher in another ‘Ram rajya’, a period of prosperity, peace and righteousness. Mahatma Gandhi once rightly said: “Ramayana of my dreams ensures equal rights to both prince and pauper”.

The late Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, one of the founding members of Jana Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) also believed in ‘Antyodaya’, which literally means a person standing last in the queue will be benefited.

Hence, now it is the duty of the government, both at the State and the Centre, as well as every citizen to work hard for the economic and social well-being of the country.

Veena Shenoy

Thane

Educating farmers

Apropos ‘India, 16 nations drag EU to WTO on MRL issue’ (November 11). This is not a matter for Indian farmers to rejoice, since the rationale behind the use of most derivatives — including pesticides, insecticides, fungicides and chemical manure — is not based on scientific prerequisite.

Without going too deep into the claims of these nations on the issue of maximum residue levels (MRL), the need of the hour is to alert the Indian farming community on the calamitous effects of uncontrolled application of these substances, which ultimately leads to MRL. Though India is out of the RCEP for the moment, one day it may have to change its decision in the interest of the economy. Hence, efforts to educate the farming community on certain sensitive issues must begin at once.

Rajiv N Magal

Sakaleshpur

MSME growth

Apropos ‘Enable MSMEs to grow and create jobs’ (November 11). Beyond the key issues for MSMEs — which employ 92 per cent of the workforce — such as regulatory burden, poor labour productivity and problems in land acquirement, the absence of industrial clusters is the pivotal lacunae.

Viable, product-wise industrial clusters should be set up with technical, finance and marketing services that will avert their problems and avoid failures. With product-synchronised clusters, it will be easy for the government to facilitate growth.

NR Nagarajan

Sivakasi

Pre-poll alliances

This refers to ‘Shiv Sena invited to form govt in Maharashtra’ (November 11). Electoral democracy is all about meeting the aspirations of the people. In the recently held Maharashtra elections, the BJP and the Shiva Sena had secured 105 and 56 seats, respectively.

Both the parties had a pre-poll alliance based on ideology. The Shiv Sena, citing a 50:50 formula reportedly agreed to by the BJP before the polls, is bent upon claiming the Chief Minister’s post. Going forward, to avoid such scenarios in the future, any pre-poll alliances involving like-minded parties need to be documented and placed before the public.

For now, there can be only two possible outcomes — either the Shiv Sena must prove its majority in the floor of the Assembly, which they can do only with the support of the NCP and the Congress; or President’s rule must be imposed in the State. The former will amount to going against the aspirations of the people and the latter will lead to elections being ordered once again.

The silver lining is that the BJP has declined the governor’s invitation without indulging in horse trading. In a democracy, it is not just about assuming power by proving majority, but doing so as per the will of the people.

Srinivasan Velamur

Chennai

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