Fee cuts & scraps

Officials of the Union Human Resources Development Ministry ‘‘crowned’’ by Murli Manohar Joshi consider th...

Officials of the Union Human Resources Development Ministry ‘‘crowned’’ by Murli Manohar Joshi consider themselves immune to, and above, the law of the land (‘IIMs: Time to act’, IE, March 12).

Joshi is a completely disillusioned, self-styled educationist who just cannot stand autonomy of prized educational institutions like the IITs and IIMs. He feels that if the court decides to preserve the autonomy of the IIMs, that would also preserve his ‘‘inferiority complex’’ for ever.

These premier institutions must be saved by the timely intervention of the prime minister before it is too late. Joshi should get rid of his plethora of bizarre ideas, and refrain from making a mess of the issue. He should not be even allowed to meddle with primary education in the country.

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George Bernard Shaw has said, ‘‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’’

— F.S.K. Barar On e-mail

Primary colours

• ON the one hand, the NDA government is gung-ho about liberalisation. On the other hand, Murli Manohar Joshi wants to follow a regime of controls and checks. Education is too serious a subject to be left in the hands of babus and ideology-driven politicians like Joshi.

What we need are lakhs of schools all over the country with proper infrastructure, qualified teachers and decent syllabi. Children in rural areas and even poorer urban areas get virtually no education because there are not enough schools. Then, when it is time for admission, there is a mad scramble for private schools. By providing good government schools accessible to many of the poorer children, the demand for private schools will also go down.

Bringing down the IIM fee is not the answer. What happens when Wharton opens a branch in Hyderabad? Can Joshi get them to cut their fee? We will end up in a situation with our premier IITs and IIMs looking worse than Joshi’s government schools today. But I forget! India is shining!

— Vijaya Ghose On e-mail

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Left behind
• T.V.R. Shenoy’s article ‘Left(over) Front’ (IE, March 11) is atrocious. It fails to take into consideration the real ‘‘left’’, the concept of taking into consideration the poorest in society. And it masks the real, historical fact of the capitalist system’s complete disregard for the welfare of large chunks of humanity.

— S. Visveswaran On e-mail

•Left(over) Front’ is a thought-provoking article — full of insight. The Left parties prefer expediency to principles!

— Savitri Mittal On e-mail

DNA soup

• It was funny to read Yograj Singh saying all that about genetic preparation (‘Yuvraj should marry someone like Steffi’, IE, March 10). Many great athletes have taken health problems like asthma, cancer and diabetes in their stride. Does that mean they had bad genes? Or that the likes of Wasim Akram and Arthur Ashe were not successful?

Cricket and many other sports are more about skill, devotion and hard work. Success in dependent on these skills, rather than on genetic make-up. If people start following Yograj’s advice, marriage will just become a biological manoeuvre to make sure your son is fairer and taller than you are.