For a headstart

to reading the other parts. However, he has failed to provide any

mention of over a quarter million IT/Tech professionals with a high

concentration of entrepreneurs of Indian origin in the West, as

one of the critical advantages that India needs to leverage. This

rather large group of people holds the budgets and decisions to

outsource with regard to percentage of the budget and the location.

I believe this advantage is extremely strategic and very difficult

for other countries to replace easily.

— Hemant Asher On e-mail

I would like to add a few points to Shourie’s column. In Japan,

it was indigenous companies like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Sony, Mitsui,

Marubeni, and so on, that grew to make the country what it is today.

Both China and India need to ensure that we grow our own companies

in addition to adding to the wealth of American stockholders. Also

South Koreans moved up the value chain very quickly. Call centre

jobs are not the highest in the value chain. It is a great opportunity

for India to capitalise on to move ahead. But we must be cognisant

of the fact that America is moving its people and skills up the

value chain. We should not be yet another Mexico that forever supplies

cheap labour to the West

.

— Ashok Raghavan On e-mail

This is with reference to Eijaz Haider’s ‘Battle for Pakistan’

(IE, December 31). He is partly right when he writes that if the

Islamic state loses its legitimacy as the surrogate of Allah then

the responsibility of ‘amr bil maroof wa nahi anil munkar’

(spreading good and eradicating evil) vested in it for that reason,

would pass on to the individual or a group. The same is also applicable

for other duties of an Islamic state, ie, to establish systems of

Salah and Zakah. Besides congregational prayers, Salah comprises

the construction and maintenance of mosques, appointments of imams,

muezzins, and so on. The Zakah system is collection of money from

the rich, its appropriate distribution to the needy and to fulfill

the other needs of the society as described in the Holy Quran. But

today Muslim societies, all over the world, are least bothered to

fill the vacuum created by the absence of an Islamic state.

— M. Aslam Ghazi On e-mail

Apropos of the story,‘A-I welcome: You bloody Indians’

(IE, January 2), the Air-India manager should be fired. As Indians

living abroad, we really hate to fly Air-India, since our own A-I

staff are arrogant, and now even foreign nationals working in the

organisation know how much an Indian respects an Indian.

— Satish Kumar On e-mail

I have been flying in and out of India since 1968 and I find A-I’s

ground staff absolutely lousy all over the world.

—Swastik Sandel On e-mail

I think it is unfair to blame Air-India for what a Sudanese employee

had said to an Indian businessman. But there should be no doubt

that Air-India has to investigate into this incident and bring the

erring official to book.

— Hari On e-mail