Fare hike fix is in
A significant item that has gone unnoticed in the railway minister’s speech is the inbuilt fare hike, year after year. The annual pension amount is almost Rs 30,000 crore, rising at approximately 15 per cent per annum, which requires an additional Rs 4,500 crore every year. If we add a fuel hike of, say seven-eight per cent per annum, a fare revision of 12-14 per cent is required to cover just these expenses each year. If infrastructural projects have to be taken up, fares have to rise further. Since bullet trains at Rs 60,000 crore are simply beyond the railway’s resources, the common man will be subjected to additional taxes and exorbitant fares. Where are we really heading? The minister has not provided any clear road map for either cost control or revenue augmentation.
Atul Gupta
Promises not kept
It is painful to take stock of the situation today in relation to the vociferous promises made to us by Narendra Modi during the election campaign:
(i) The prices of essential commodities continue to rise without any sign of reduction
(ii) Retrospective Tax has not been abolished to induce confidence among foreign investors;
(iii) Funds have been allocated to ‘Aadhar’, which the BJP opposed tooth and nail; (v) FDI in Defence and Insurance allowed upto 49 per cent, when the BJP opposed even the 26 per cent announced by the Congress; (vi) The creation of infrastructure and the setting up of industries requires land acquisition, departmental clearance, forest clearance and rehabilitation of tribals et al. The BJP has not explained how it proposes to deal with these issues (vii) Rail fares were hiked, especially the Mumbai EMU Pass fares were exponentially hiked but popular anger forced a rollback in this hike. (viii) the BJP earlier is said to have engineered an amendment to the laws governing TRAI that its chairman after retirement, could not take up a government job and now the PM is said to be keen to take the ordinance route to do just this; (ix) Unilateral segregation of Gopal Subramanium by the government from the list of judges as proposed by the CJI, without consulting the latter.
All of which do not augur well for the new government. Further, the PM has not chosen to address any of these issues to induce confidence among the people. They are not interested in statues or bullet trains right now, all they want is respite from unbridled expenses.
T M Uday Shankar
Heart of the matter
Sometime ago, Baba Ramdev had claimed that homosexuality is a disease and he could cure it with appropriate yoga exercises. Now, his close associate, the journalist Ved Prakash Vaidik, has met the dreaded terrorist Hafiz Saeed, Baba Ramdev now claims that this is an attempt to change the heart of this murderer who firmly believes that USA, India and Israel are the worst enemies of Pakistan and Islam and have to be completely destroyed!
When Manmohan Singh proposed talking to the Pakistani government to settle disputes, he
was labelled weak, shown as succumbing to militant pressure and they stopped short of calling him a traitor.
But when Vaidik talks to a hardened criminal like Hafiz, he is doing a duty to his nation! Whose change of heart are we talking about?
Anil Bagarka
Right to differ
I partly disagree with the view expressed in ‘Pettiness as policy’ (July 14). My disagreement is not based on the appointment of the TRAI chairman as Principal Secretary. The Congress Party’s strength in the Lok Sabha is reduced to 44 in a house of 543, but this does not mean the party should support whatever the government proposes. We saw how the NDA did not allow Parliament to function for the last five years when the UPA, or rather, the Congress was ruling. The previous government was also elected and ought to have been allowed to function. It is a crime to prevent an elected government from functioning. May be all the parties, except the Congress, may go along with the NDA now, but this should not stop the Congress should take the right stand, even if it has only one member in Parliament.
S S Nair
Prices up, markers down?
As a layman, I am unable to comprehend this strange phenomenon. On the one hand, we see the prices of essential commodities going through the roof; but on the other, the official parameters, the WPI and CPI, supposedly indicating the ground realities in the matter, are showing a distinctly downward trend. This reminds me of the dark days of the Emergency, when these indices were deftly manipulated by the then government and published accordingly to show the “robust” health of the Indian economy.
Arun Malankar
Good for Modi, ergo for us?
In underscoring the importance of the choice of Amit Shah as BJP’s president for Narendra Modi Swapan Dasgupta need not have made an unfair and biased comparison between Modi and Atal Behari Vajpayee (July 15). Further, the elevation of Shah may be good for Modi (and even the BJP in the short run), but will it be good for the nation? His meteoric rise is bound to ruffle many feathers in and outside the BJP.
