Letters to the editor

Sex ed urgent• THE government survey which indicates that almost 50 per cent of kids in our country are being abused is shocking and sh...

Sex ed urgent

• THE government survey which indicates that almost 50 per cent of kids in our country are being abused is shocking and should act as an eye-opener for everybody. Sexual frustration leads to sexual abuse, and children could be the easiest targets. This only highlights the dangers of the recent policy decision taken by the Maharashtra government to stop sex education in schools. Lack of sex education makes children particularly vulnerable to sexual predators. In fact, adults in our country also need sex education. Good books and well-presented, informative programmes through the medium of television could go a long way in addressing the matter. This, coupled with effective punishment of sex offenders, would be the right way to respond to the issue.

— S.N. Kabra, Mumbai

Kashmir skirted

• PAKISTAN’S Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was quite right when he observed, while addressing the media in New Delhi (IE, April 5), that the objectives of peace and progress in the region cannot be realised “without a durable resolution of the Kashmir issue”. He showed a remarkably positive attitude to other Indo-Pak issues like “flood-control, energy, food and environment,” and gave his country’s endorsement to the Saarc countries resolution to effectively combat terrorism, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke eloquently of the need for greater trade and movement between peoples. However, the real issue remains unarticulated: terrorism and the Kashmir ‘problem’, which has assumed the status of a riddle wrapped in an enigma. I, a senior citizen, and a devout democrat, want to ask Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, “Why are you maintaining a deadening silence over the real Kashmir issue: should Kashmir remain with India, with Pakistan or be an independent state? What crime have Kashmiris committed by asking for their fundamental right to freedom? Till this question is answered, no one in Pakistan or India can stop either violence or terrorism.

— Parimal Y. Mehta, New Delhi

Judicial view

• THE quota issue is back on the boil. The apex court of the country has rightly ruled that the criteria to determine OBCs on the basis of 1931 census are error-prone. It also admitted the plea that the manner in which the quota policy is being pushed through by politicians is bound to weaken the delicate fabric of social harmony and national brotherhood. No right-thinking person can deny that the weaker sections of society need support in various forms and that reservation is one of the tools. What baffles one is the manner in which certain selfish politicians are championing the cause for votes and power. They are not even prepared to listen to the wise counsel of the judiciary.

— V.K. Pandey Gandhinagar