Letters to the editor dated October 18, 2021

Media reports say that this year India ranks 101 out of 116 countries in the Global Hunger Index. This makes news as it’s a drastic fall from last year’s position at 94.

Given the high stocks of foodgrains, at least in the pre-pandemic period, why anyone should remain hungry today?

The answer is: People/nations (many of them) do not have the money to buy food! India has idle resources which are yet to be mainstreamed and accounted which will be sufficient to feed all Indians for the next five years. Once fed well for one year our farmers and workers will multiply farm and industrial production with amazing speed.

Mumbai

Apropos ‘Delhi govt launches month-long campaign to reduce vehicular emissions’ (October 18), one fails to see any rationale behind the Delhi government over ambitiously month-long ‘Red Light On, Gaadi Off’ campaign across 100 crossings in the city to reduce vehicular emission. In fact, toying with such an imprudent idea may culminate in undue wastage of the auto-fuels during the proposed switching off and restarting the vehicular engine of millions of vehicles that may be plying at any point of time, on its extremely busy roads.

The better option could be to identify all ‘polluting’ vehicles, irrespective of their age, and put them off the capital's roads after serving them with notices. This rule should universally apply to all, without any exceptions. There seems to be no logic behind specifying the maximum age limit of 15 years for petrol and 10 years for diesel driven vehicles too. The Delhi government must show that it means business.

Panchkula (Haryana)

This refers to ‘Tapering the taper: All eyes on the US Fed’ ( October 18). The emerging economies (EM) are more vulnerable to the US Fed tapering though this time it has adopted a gradual approach.

Apart from measures like tapering in monthly bond buying programme, it is the rise in US treasury bond yields which will prove attractive to foreign investors to divert funds from EMs into US. India appears to be well prepared this time, thanks to its copious foreign exchange reserves and the growth potential in the post pandemic phase.

The vulnerability to the record froex accumulation is that they are not stable in nature since they are not derived out of export surplus unlike China. Looking at the positive side, the record investments by domestic investors in stock market due to unattractive returns offered by debt instruments has buoyed the market and insulated it from the fluctuations in FPI inflows. On market intervention, RBI has every right to take measures beyond 2 per cent of GDP since extraordinary times calls for extraordinary measures which need not lead to India being branded as “currency manipulator”.

Chennai

The Fed’s tapering of its quantitative easing could lead to capital flight from emerging markets to the US. India could handle the Fed move by adjusting the supply of dollars and arresting capital flight. India also has huge forex reserves to manage other external shocks.

Sivakasi

Coal has become the latest headache for the government which has been battling a number of other issues.

While there is no doubt that natural factors like floods have been responsible for the current situation. The vacancies at the top in Coal India Ltd meant that there was nobody to take urgent decisions which may have prevented the current crisis.

The problem of unpaid dues and irregular coal supply needs to be sorted out as quickly as possible. China is facing a similar situation, but has been quick to try and regularise supplies so that power and industrial production are not affected. In India the situation is quite different. The party in power is more concerned about winning elections.

Mumbai

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