LETTERS

Choosing a President

The Cover Story package "Choosing a President" (July 5) includes an assortment of thought-provoking articles on A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the presidential candidate nominated by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

In his book India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium Kalam emphasises technological strength, based on the firm conviction that in a unipolar world only strength matters. One is reminded of E.F. Schumacher's book Small Is Beautiful, which has an unmistakable Gandhian slant rooted in non-violence (which is a strength) and advocates socially relevant and appropriate technology as a development panacea for poor countries. The rationales of Schumacher and Kalam are not only dissimilar but poles apart. The humanistic idiom of Schumacher is antithetical to the physical-strength-based growth idiom of Kalam, although Kalam dwells on the role of punyatmas, punyadhikaris and punyanetas in taking India forward to the new millennium. Somehow Kalam's obsession with technology and development rationale do not mix.

Technology is not value-free. Kalam appears to sidestep the political, economic, sociological, ecological and cultural aspects of technology.

The Editorial ("An unsuitable choice") is a cogently and convincingly argued one. The suitability or otherwise of the presidential candidate will become clear in the course of time. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

John Mammen
Thiruvananthapuram

* * *

Albert Einstein, a great scientist and humanist, was invited by Israel to be its President. But he politely declined the offer. Abdul Kalam is also a humanist but it is not clear how suitable he will be for the post of the President of India in a situation where a large number of politicians are not free from charges of corruption, criminal links, human rights violation, and so on. What can an honest man like Kalam do in this situation? Although India is the largest democracy in the world, its first citizen does not have executive powers.

S. Prakash
Mutharasanallur, Tamil Nadu

* * *

The NDA, which cited convention to deny a second term for President K.R. Narayanan, has breached the convention of elevating the incumbent Vice-President to the high office. Except Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, all other Presidents were elevated from vice-presidency. The only Vice-President who was not considered for the presidency was B.D. Jatti because the Janata Party government in 1977 preferred Sanjiva Reddy.

The Congress(I) and the Samajwadi Party could not oppose Kalam because they knew that the BJP would make it an issue in the next parliamentary elections.

The BJP's game plan is simple. While the elite section of the Muslim community has realised this, other sections in the minority community, most of them uneducated, have not. A Muslim President with no political or constitutional background will only serve the BJP's interest.

Anwar Batcha
Coimbatore

* * *

It is pleasing to note that the highest post of the country has gone to an apolitical person. But he is not the only person who has made India proud in the field of science and technology. We should remember the contributions made by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the agricultural scientist. He was the man behind India's highly successful Green Revolution, which helped India acquire the much-needed self-sufficiency in food production.

Sultan Ali Ahmed
Barpeta, Assam

Geelani's arrest

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the secessionist leader of the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami and an influential member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, should have been arrested much earlier ("Moves and counter-moves", July 5). Though he calls himself a Pakistani with no respect for the Indian Constitution, he draws an MLA's pension of Rs.7,100 a year from the Union government.

The authorities should also keep a watch on other hardliners such as Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhat, chairman of the APHC, who do not have faith in the Indian Constitution, do not recognise the Election Commission of India and want Pakistan to be included in talks on the Kashmir issue. If such leaders are brought to book, peace will return to the Kashmir Valley.

S. Balakrishnan
Jamshedpur

Mumbai's architecture

Thanks for an interesting article on Mumbai's architecture ("Mumbai, past in present", July 5).

I live in Toronto where older structures face the same sort of pressures from developers amid changed demographics, not to mention "new" conceptions about what contemporary cities ought to be. We too fight to retain Art Deco and other structures which, if current developers have their way, will be no more.

A year ago, a friend visited us from Mumbai. We walked the streets of Toronto's older districts. "This reminds me of Mumbai," he said, and we smiled at the city's mishmash of buildings, some still pointing to the early 19th century. And, of course, all that has come as lasting reminders of the optimism of the 1930s as the Great Depression at last seemed to be reaching its end.

Let us retain what belongs to all citizens, adapt buildings for new purposes if necessary. But we should bear in mind that a city evolves over time and that much of its past is to be retained and, when possible, restored.

Megan S. Mills
Received on e-mail

War talk

Thanks for publishing Arundhati Roy's "War Talk" (June 21). I hope others in the U.S. will ultimately get to read this piece. As usual, she has written a thoughtful and cogent commentary on the issue. The seemingly "stray and disconnected" thoughts for which she apologises actually tie together, with her usual incisiveness, the public and the personal, the crisis and the context. From her staying in Delhi (not out of courage, not because she dismisses the threat, but out of despairing insight), to the image of the zapping of the fig wasps along with the rest of us, to the stunning clarity of the cost of a Hawk bomber in human terms, she does not let us forget that this is ultimately all about real life, and real death.

Bill Kasdorf
Michigan,
United States

Women's welfare

This refers to Ravi Sharma's interview with Dr. Adam Carey ("For a woman's well-being", June 21). Carey has presented facts about the breakthrough in the production of plant-originated hormones known as "isoflavones" to manage menopause and interrelated problems. We should be grateful to the innovative research and development studies taken up by him.

K. Ramadoss
Chennai

Governance

In the article "Visions of power", Congress president Sonia Gandhi is quoted as saying that governance is fundamentally about maintaining law and order and ensuring security of life and property. This is true but she has missed a third crucial purpose of governance, namely, creation of opportunities.

Law and order and security enable peaceful living, but they do not create national vitality; a nation flourishes only if its people are able to create opportunities for themselves, whether in education, employment, business, arts or any other sphere of human endeavour. Governments have a crucial role to play in providing the financial, regulatory and creative environments which encourage people to create and develop such opportunities for themselves and for others. In this regard, every politician in India should read Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom.

Dr. Chris Barrigar
Chennai

The BSP-BJP alliance

The article on Mayawati's government in Uttar Pradesh observes that only populism and more populism lie ahead ("A convincing vote", June 7). However, it seems to me that holding her regime guilty of populism, now and in the future, is only a mild indictment, as this is after all a malady generally found in contemporary Indian polity.

Mayawati's government calls for a much stronger indictment because the coalition of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should be seen in the context of the stand taken by the latter on the violence against Muslims in Gujarat. In the light of the culpability of the Sangh Parivar in the Gujarat pogrom, the association of the BSP, an ostensibly secular political party, with the BJP in U.P. cannot be regarded simply as a repetition of earlier coalitions. The violence was symptomatic not only of a fractured society but also of a malignant disease in the body politic of Gujarat. The endorsement of the Narendra Modi regime by the central BJP leadership implicates the latter in the brutalisation of society. In the communally charged atmosphere in several parts of Gujarat, it is a stigma to be a Muslim. The BJP as a whole must take responsibility for the gross violation in Gujarat of two cardinal principles of the Constitution - secularism and the right to life. In this light, the BSP forming a government with the support of the BJP in U.P. amounts to collusion with forces that seek to undermine the very foundations of India's polity.

It is also doubtful whether the BSP-BJP alliance in U.P. will truly advance the interests of those who form the BSP's social base, especially Dalits. In all probability these Dalits voted against political parties associated with the forces that oppressed them politically and materially. These parties include the BJP and the Samajwadi Party. But the BJP, given its predominantly upper-caste base, represents these forces more than the S.P. It is difficult to believe that Dalits who aspired for a voice in the formal political arena by voting for the BSP were prepared to make a compromise with such forces. It is important to remember that the BSP was pitted against the BJP because the latter is an embodiment of Manuwad, an ideology that not only legitimises upper-caste control over material and political resources but also holds subordinate castes in contempt. Indeed, it combines within itself both the material and cultural oppression of those deemed to be low in the caste hierarchy.

It is extremely unlikely that a power-sharing arrangement between the leaders of such incompatible parties will genuinely improve the lives of the ordinary supporters of the BSP. How will it benefit Dalits who are subjected to upper-caste domination in their everyday lives? Will Dalit agricultural labourers get better wages or have better access to land for cultivation? Will Dalit women be able to work in the fields without being sexually harassed by their employers? Will there be substantial improvements in the access of Dalits to education and health care?

Anand Chakravarti,
Professor of Sociology,
University of Delhi
Delhi

Clarification: In the article "Engineered risks" (July 5) it was stated that the signatories to a letter to Karnataka Chief Minister S.M. Krishna, protesting against the introduction of Bt cotton seeds in the State, were from the Environmental Support Group, Karnataka. They were actually drawn from several environmental groups and included Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh; T.N. Prakash Kammardi, Editor, Hittala Gida; K. Ravi and P. Babu, Karnataka Coalition Against GM Crops; Bharamagowda, Organic Cotton Growers Association; and L.N. Gopalakrishnan, National Alliance of People's Movement.