Letters to the editor

Bijapurkar’s article, ‘Westward Ho Chi Minh City’

(IE, September 15). She deserves commendations for her detailed analysis of present-day policies of our communist friends. She writes, “they fight America in the history books and museums while wooing America to help improve quality of life and GDP of the present”. This is precisely the point. Our comrades are aware that communism thrives in poverty so they blindly oppose any progressive economic policies. Does anybody remember how vehemently their militant trade unions opposed the introduction of computers in offices in the 1970s? The blind opposition of Karat and company to the Indo-US nuclear pact is not about idealism or love for China. It’s about their party’s survival in politics. Our comrades know too well that availability of cheaper energy resources means greater economic returns. But they are unable to oppose the pact, citing their real reasons. Therefore they have to hide behind some outdated slogans. Alas your newspaper missed this important point.

— K.M. Kurien Bahrain

Restoring sex ratio

• I BELIEVE Pamela

Philipose (‘Gender bender’,

IE, September 17) is spot on in delineating the dilemma of the counter-acting arguments: the right of a couple to ‘balance their family’ and the duty of the government to ensure a balanced sex ratio. The import of the words ‘right’ and ‘duty’ is the key. To the best of my knowledge, duties precede rights. Hence it is a duty, so to say, of the government to ensure a balanced sex ratio.

If this entails injunctions (as it clearly does given the present scenario) against sex determination practices, they must be accepted, nolens volens. Nature does take care of sex ratio quite naturally, given the equal probabilities of the conception of a male or female foetus. However, as always, there is something playing the spoilsport. In this case people with a predilection for sons. — Aditya Sihag

New Delhi

Masonry posture

• According to a PTI report published in your newspaper (IE, September 18), Tamil Nadu Chief Minister was at his sarcastic best, asking who Ram is and from which

engineering college did he graduate. Well, I wish to record the fact that Karunanidhi — a proclaimed atheist — shared public platforms with Satya Sai Baba and Mata Anandamayee not so long ago. Therefore it is not necessary to take his rhetoric and hyperbole on Ram very seriously. As for the engineering college question, the

answer is simple. Lord Ram might not have chosen to

attend those rackets, passing off as engineering colleges, which dot Tamil Nadu, if they had been around in his era. Will the Tamil Nadu CM tell us whether the ancient temples in his state were built by

engineers as he understands them? He would also do well to speak politely. “The jackals” he referred to as obstructing the project were the very ones with whom his party shared power at the Centre until recently.

— M.K.D. Prasada Rao

Ghaziabad

Congressmen’s Ram

• THE ruling party has made a mockery of its own leaders who assemble every year at Rajghat on Gandhiji’s death anniversary. He died mouthing the words, ‘Hey Ram.’ Yet Ram never existed as per the affidavit submitted on the Sethusamudram project by the ruling party.

— Sudarshan Bhatia

London