Us and them

• C. Raja Mohan's ‘Beyond nuclear stability’ (IE, Dec 14) was a th...

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• C. Raja Mohan’s ‘Beyond nuclear stability’ (IE, Dec 14) was a thoughtful article and it will be appreciated and understood by planners of a mature civil society. To co-operate and move away from a fixed mindset on Indo-Pak relations requires changes in the attitudes of the Pakistani establishment. It is a well known that the Pakistani army is still dreaming of snatching J&K from India with the support of the jehadis. The US has a vital role to play in ensuring that the two warring factions continue to talk and to speak sense.

— G. Sriniwasan On e-mail

• If we take into account the fact that Pakistan’s military spending is around 9 per cent of its annual GDP, while India’s is around 3 per cent, and that Pakistan is only one of India’s adversaries — Raja Mohan has ignored China and Bangladesh — the real contours of the challenge India faces come through. Why is it that Indian experts like him are fixated on Pakistan while viewing India’s various constraints and commitments?

— Niraj Tuteja Mumbai

Inside RAW

• Your editorial (‘RAW incompetence’, IE, Dec 14) on the country’s premier intelligence agency, may be factually correct but it is unfair to its founders such as the faceless Ramji Kao (de facto NSA to two PMs), Sankaran Nair (HC to Singapore), Naosher Suntook (member, Minorities Commission), Garry Saxena (governor, J&K) who unobtrusively raised the organisation under the directions of a far-sighted PM to admirable heights. If, as you say, the handling of Kargil intrusions was ham-handed, how is it that the head of the RAW was promoted as governor before his superannuation? The real story is that in the wake of an uncontrollable euphoria over Pokharan II and the Lahore Bus, the Vajpayee government became too complacent allowing intrusions to take place under their very noses.

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— Mukund B. Kunte Addl secretary (retd), Dept of Cabinet Affairs, GOI New Delhi

Courage in words

• Sucheta Dalal’s excellent article, ‘What’s governance…’ (IE, Dec 6), is courageous for the writer goes ahead and takes potshots at the mafia!

— S.S. Jeyaraman Coimbatore

A fit case…

• Sample these epithets being used for a long while by the higher echelons of judiciary and the media alike in relation to the situation in Bihar: “state of anarchy”; “rampant lawlessness”; “badlands”; “criminalisation of the state”; “entire administrative machinery has failed”; “ hubs of gangsterism”; “emergency-like conditions”. Even the Election Commission has expressed its resentment over the goings-on in Laloo land. And, yet, surprisingly we are reluctant to pick up the courage to make a forthright suggestion that President’s rule be imposed in Bihar. One fails to understand why.

— S.C. Kapoor Noida

Special thanks

• This is just to thank the Indian Express for taking note of my achievement in becoming India’s ‘Child Genius’. It encourages me greatly.

— Shubham Prakhar Muzaffarpur, Bihar