• The CJI’s suggestion that high court judges increase their workload from 210 days to 220 days is welcome; but it’s still too little, too late (‘In attendance’, IE, August 18). More meaningful steps ought to be taken to settle 31.2 million pending cases. The colonial tradition of court vacation should have disappeared long ago. Working two shifts can also be experimented with. Similarly, prior sanction/ consent for prosecution, frequent statutory amendments, etc could be removed, as is the tendency of everybody to appeal to higher courts.

— C.S. Pathak Pune

Afghan dead end

• To a seasoned political observer, the Afghanistan presidential election sounds like a joke. How long this arrangement will last is anybody’s guess. Afghanistan has been constantly beset with internecine wars. As of today, other than the cities of Kabul and Kandahar, the lay population of Afghanistan is unaware as to who is their real government — Hamid Karzai’s group, the Western powers or the Taliban. The pre- and post-election situation is as uncertain as any rural Afghan’s life. One hopes that the election would offer a valid result; one also hopes that the violence will be curbed and stability restored to India’s backyard.

— Arun Malankar Mumbai

• Without going into the controversy that Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah has landed itself and its author in, it might be said that there’s merit in opening up the Indian discourse on M.A. Jinnah. This isn’t a question of Singh’s credibility or intellectual acumen as an historian, but of reappraisals of the roles of all our iconic national leaders. Why should we, as a democratic state, a free society, be afraid of that?

... contd.