Policy in times

•In his article, ‘Adrift on growth, and a hope’, Harsh V. Pant has done a rare service by educating those who are behind times, ignoring contemporary realities, notably our comrades. The writer rightly says a nation’s foreign policy cannot be geared to keep every other country in the world in good humour. In international relations, the abiding truth is that a country has permanent interests and no permanent friends.

China is enjoying its release from the shell of isolation, thanks to the policy of Deng Xiaoping, and its growth path is notable. India has come out of the Hindu rate of growth after the liberalisation crafted by Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. In the aftermath of the World War II, for more than two decades, the US, the erstwhile USSR and China played self-serving roles, at the expense of many colonial underdeveloped countries. Much of that has changed. America is now a declining power.

In such a scenario, India’s foreign policy pursuits are found hamstrung by our communists, whose ideas are anything but realistic.

— M.K.D. Prasada Rao

Ghaziabad

Saving lives

•This refers to ‘Save lives, not laws’ by Bibek Debroy. He has put the issue of human organ transplantation in the right perspective. It’s a fact that “enforcement is easiest when the law makes sense and is, therefore, almost self- enforcing”. The laws should be patient-friendly, as it is a question of life and death. But in the absence of extremely low number of eligible organ donors vis-a-vis the huge number of needy recipients, the law ought to be thoroughly amended in tune with the need of the hour. There can’t be any straightjacket approach in health related matters.

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