• It is really unfortunate that the Maharashtra government proposes collective punishment on entire villages where atrocities against Dalits are committed. The state government even proposes to withhold development funds from such villages, something that will adversely affect Dalits too. Is it not administrative inefficiency and indifference to Dalits that has failed to check such crimes? Punish the officers who fail to perform their duty. Collective punishment is the easy, populist way out.

— Ved Guliani

Hisar

Striking hard

• The two-day PSU bank strike is altogether unjustified, especially during a global recession. Banks are the lifeline of all business and a single day’s strike jeopardises the economy. Frankly, one doesn’t even understand why PSU employees need to strike, since nobody’s as safe as they are during economic crises, without any questions being raised as to their efficiency and competence.

— S.N. Kabra Mumbai

A poet for all

• This refers to the editorial ‘Casting the first stone’ . Tiruvalluvar was a poet-saint who wrote for humanity as a whole. A figure like him is universal and cannot be claimed by any one community alone. Nor should he be derided by anybody. The installation of Tiruvalluvar’s statue must not be considered as an exercise of flaunting Tamil civic pride but as an exercise in increasing awareness of such personalities. Indeed, his work Tirukkural is celebrated as

“A Bible to the whole world”. That said, it would be ironic to reduce him to just a linguistic identity.

... contd.