Manmohan’s year

• In ‘The 60 per cent PM’ (IE, May 19), T.V.R. Shenoy says the pri...

• In ‘The 60 per cent PM’ (IE, May 19), T.V.R. Shenoy says the prime minister will be known by the company he keeps. That criticism should be more true of Atal Bihari Vajpayee who justified chargesheeted persons in his cabinet. And who can forget that like the proverbial Roman emperor, Vajpayee was fiddling while Gujarat was burning. Shenoy says UPA allies are confrontationist. But everybody knows it is the BJP and the sangh parivar who are not reconciled to their unexpected defeat in the last

elections. They’ve been boycotting Parliament and holding the country to ransom through their politics of confrontation. Shenoy should write an article on one year of the BJP in opposition!

— Harish H.V. Bangalore

• Manmohan Singh is an honourable man in addition to being an intelligent and capable technocrat. Given the right circumstances and company, he could accomplish much more than what he was allowed to in the first year of UPA. It may be a weird thought but many people must be thinking it: Manmohan should walk out of the Congress and UPA. There is every possibility that a respectable number of MPs, genuinely interested in the development of the country, will walk out with him. His place is with those who are seriously concerned about the economy and creating large-scale employment opportunities using the huge talent pool available in India.

— Giri Girishankar On e-mail

• It is both the convention and the rule in most parliamentary democracies that the PM, the home minister, and the finance minister should be from the Lower House. First the PM himself has not chosen to get himself elected to the Lower House. The ministers of home, law, HRD, power, among others are from the Rajya Sabha, many of them nominated to it after defeat in the Lok Sabha elections. A strange record, indeed.

— G.S. Bhargava New Delhi

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• Shenoy has listed a lot of problems. Can he also please suggest some solutions? He seems to have forgotten that the people of India have given this fractured mandate. The problem is as much of the people as the politicians.

— Navjot Singh Pabla Augusta

No alternative

• This refers to your editorial ‘The Odd Couple’ (IE, May 19). Last year Sonia Gandhi’s decision not to assume the prime ministership went down as a “master stroke” but it had only a short-term effect. Manmohan Singh took over as PM, with Sonia Gandhi as “super prime minister”. The arrangement was an extra-constitutional measure to hold power and tide over the crisis created by Congress sycophants. If Manmohan Singh was left to himself to function as PM, he would have been a great success. Let’s wait and watch, as no other effective alternative is available.

— F.S.K. Barar Jodhpur

Absurd reason

• With reference to your editorial ‘No fear of flying’ (IE, May 19), it is a laughable excuse being offered by the US that granting veto power to new permanent members in the expanded UN Security Council will paralyse the UN system and its functioning. Pray, will the US forego its right to exercise its veto power and otherwise stop bulldozing the world body?

— M.K.D. Prasada Rao On e-mail