Airport takes off

• We are seeing the fruits of your paper bringing the important issue of an international airport for Bangalore to the limelight and t...

• We are seeing the fruits of your paper bringing the important issue of an international airport for Bangalore to the limelight and the public taking an interest in it (IE, December 22). Congratulations. The elected leaders seem to be realising that rural development doesn’t have to come at the expense of (ignoring) urban development.

— Gopi Reddy Sunnyvale, California

• Kudos to your paper for doing it again. I have been believing in you for the past four decades. As a former resident and one aspiring to return to Bangalore, I feel relieved at this outcome. Hope the Dharam Singh government lives up to expectations.

— Palani Ponnapakkam New Orleans

• Better late than never. Congratulations to Chief Minister Dharam Singh and congrats to the Express for backing the right cause. Even now it is difficult to catch up with Shanghai. But let us keep trying and fully leverage India’s strengths. If Bangalore wins Karnataka gains. If Bangalore surges, India wins. Look at the big picture, folks!

— Saty Ayyala Detroit

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• In the case of the Bangalore airport, we all know that it was cleared many times and hailed by a gullible public and press. But once the limelight was off, the political class saw it as an opportunity to make money by holding the project up and thus blackmailing the promoters. Even after this clearance, if one were to systematically trace the hold-up points in this process of approval, we would be able to zero in on the real culprits responsible for the delay. Allowing bygones to be bygones only means that India will continue to figure among the most corrupt countries in the world.

— Sharath Haldia

In Lakshmi’s name

• Lakshmi N. Mittal has been quite a phenomenon for all of us Indians living abroad and love this country. I was quite curious about the nature of the change he was talking about. How does he infuse that change? How does he foresee the change as having positive outcomes? What are the generic rules he follows on ensuring change? If only he could answer these questions, it would be a great lecture on life for all of us (‘Change in three areas would help India’s image: bureaucracy, transparency, corporate governance’, IE, December 21)

— Prakash Kapila Syracuse

• Shekhar Gupta — not just this time — is a smart man. He knows what to ask and to whom. It’s interesting the way L.N. Mittal, has grown. We love it when Indians do so well abroad. This may sound cliched but true: we do have a very great destiny ahead. Things are moving back to Asia!

— Kabeer Shrivastava Mumbai

Go global with news

• The first thing the NRI minister should do is to ask Doordarshan to have global transmission of TV news — like the BBC World Service — to inform and entertain NRIs (‘NRI ministry gets more teeth, Indians abroad more cover’, IE, Dec 20). Despite India’s name and fame about being a leading world power, it is appalling that its national TV transmission to the world is limited and, in many instances, non-existent.

— Sarat Chandran On e-mail