• Good liquor is slow poison; bad liquor can kill instantly. It’s ironic that hooch has claimed over 100 lives in Ahmedabad, in a so-called dry state. Such cases prove time and again that prohibition as a policy is foolish. Prohibition only drives the liquor trade underground, and those consuming cheap, spurious country liquor are endangered. This is the plight of millions of poor across India but it makes news only when sufficient numbers die of it. In place of prohibition, what we need is a massive public awareness drive about the hazards of drinking.

— Vinod C. Dixit

Ahmedabad

Drink control

• The Ahmedabad hooch tragedy might have been avoided if the government had a pragmatic policy in place instead of the farce called prohibition. The hypocritical policy of prohibition helps neither individuals nor society as a whole. Instead, all across the country, prohibition allows unscrupulous policemen to extort lakhs of rupees. Gujarat has taken a lead in many social issues; it’s time the Gujarat government stopped acting as society’s moral guardian.

— Amit Pradhan

Baroda

Subtle handling

• The violence in China’s Xinjiang province proves that no country is beyond the reach of extremism and exploding minority grievances. It doesn’t matter how such violence is termed and explained. The Uighurs probably have genuine complaints against the Han Chinese and China’s state policies. However, India’s job is to closely monitor what unfolds in China and subtly use the riots and the army crackdown to push the People’s Republic towards taking an unequivocal stand against terror everywhere. Enjoying China’s embarrassment and rubbing it in will backfire. If China’s says

... contd.