State of Congress

Apropos of ‘Ailing Congress getting its act together’; not only the Congress party, but the Gandhi family also seems to be making efforts to stage a comeback in the ensuing elections to five state assemblies. Its fall-out will be seen in the 2024 General Election. But for this to happen, the party will have to do a balancing act and also act in tandem with like-minded parties. There is no notable competition or opposition within the Congress when the name of anyone from the Gandhi family surfaces for leading the party, but that makes their task even more challenging.

Sudershan Walia, Amritsar

DAP shortage

Apropos of ‘Amid shortage, farmers buy DAP above MRP’, it is intriguing that farmers are getting pushed from one chaos to another practically on streets against a government which seems to be in no mood to understand their frustration and helplessness. Agriculture was the saving grace throughout the pandemic giving a positive push to the efforts for economic recovery. Is the periodic requirement of DAP and other chemical nutrients not known in advance? Why could the supply chain not be tweaked in time to spare the farmers this situation? The shortage, real or imaginary and consequent panic hoarding and skyrocketing prices is a natural phenomenon to the disadvantage of farmers and can be avoided by an alert administration.

Gp Capt JS Boparai (retd), Bhadsali

SC prod to UP govt

Taking suo motu notice of the Lakhimpur Kheri violence, the Supreme Court had to prod the UP government to do its job of conducting a proper investigation into the case. Yogi Adityanath’s government must recognise that its actions over the case are under close scrutiny by the public and the SC. The UP police must make up for the past lapses with a timely and sound chargesheet so that it inspires confidence.

PL Singh, by email

Loss to Pak

Indian skipper Virat Kohli was the cynosure of all eyes as India took on Pakistan in their first match of the ICC T20 World Cup 2021. The Men in Blue faced a humiliating loss to arch-rivals Pakistan. Twitterati wasn’t impressed with Kohli’s captaincy. As cricket lovers, we must respect good play and accept that Pakistan played better cricket.

Rajat Jain, Ujjain

Drug trade

Reference to ‘Needn’t punish possession of small quantity of drugs: Ministry’; this certainly would encourage more and more drug users as there will be no fear of any deterrent. Undoubtedly, the drug consumers, gullible youngsters in particular, need both sympathy and medical attention. But the drug trade also depends on small-time consumers, who never hold large quantity of drugs, and thus should not be given such freedom. The suggested treatment would be counter-productive to our effort to eradicate the illicit trade in drugs.

Balvinder, Chandigarh

Environmental disasters

The Western Ghats and Himalayas are vulnerable to various geophysical, hydrological and meteorological factors. Most of the states have promoted hasty industrialisation without adequate ecological risk analysis. Currently, our disaster management policies are influenced by during-disaster operations like rescue, relief and emergency rehabilitation. It, therefore, inherently ignores pre-disaster (mitigation and preparedness) and after-disaster management policies. Combining structural measures (physical construction of the reservoir, dredging of rivers to maintain ecological flow of rivers) with non-structural measures (public awareness, political intervention) would help to reduce the loss of lives and resources. Adopting urban policies in line with the Sendai framework to build resilient infrastructure is the need of the hour.

Dhawal Joshi, Churu

Revive Doordarshan

We have hundreds of TV channels today to toggle through but earlier, we only had the Doordarshan. It used to have programmes for all age-groups. It is not that DD was a lone rider, it did have competition but cable TV was still in its infancy then. The I&B Ministry should take steps to revive Doordarshan’s glory. It is in dire need of a makeover and should be re-launched with exciting shows.

Noopur Baruah, Tezpur

Support panchayats

Reference to ‘Incentivise industry, handhold the farmers’, it should be the collective responsibility of the citizens and farmers, putting the onus on farmers is not the right thing. We must have the will to support the panchayat or small-scale industry in managing the stubble.

Saranpal Singh, by mail

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