Menace of quackery

THIS is with reference to the news item "Quacks playing with human lives"(March 4). The damage being done by unqualified "doctors" can be anybody’s guess. Despite the directions by the High Court to the state health authorities in Punjab and Haryana for curbing the activities of quacks more than a year ago, the menace of quackery continues unabated. And the reasons are not far to seek.

It is common knowledge that people, especially in the rural areas, have no choice but to patronise local quacks simply because government-run institutions are either non-existent nearby or have nothing much to offer, being poorly staffed and ill-equipped and invariably starved of medicines even for simple ailments.

(Dr) S.S. SOOCH

Jalandhar

Prohibition in holy towns

Apropos of the news-item "Sale of liquor pouches banned" (February 24), I really can't understand what makes the Haryana government believe that it can succeed in keeping the three holy towns of the state (Kurukshetra, Thanesar and Pehowa) dry. The experiment of enforcing prohibition in the state should have made the government wiser and realise the futility of such a step.

It is pertinent to recall that when the state government lifted prohibition in the state last year, it argued that it was not possible to keep a state dry which was surrounded by wet states. Should the same argument not hold good in the case of the aforesaid three towns which, too, are surrounded by wet towns and villages?

Let us not forget that the law-enforcing apparatus still comprises the same kind of people who earlier made prohibition a farce in the state.

SURENDRA MIGLANI

Kaithal

Commitments of Fernandes

I read Mr Darshan Singh Maini’s "St George of Indian politics". It made very sad reading not because Mr George Fernandes has changed but because a sensitive literary person like him shows so little understanding of people, their commitments and motivations, let alone their personal history. Such sentimental writing is mere self-indulgence.

Apart from his concern for human rights and "non-party" issues, Mr Fernandes has been unambiguously and unequivocally committed to opposing the dynastic Congress. His energies are, therefore, consistently directed towards either creating or sustaining alternatives to their rule. Today, this is even more imperative if this country is to be spared from the rule of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. The nature of coalitions is such that everybody compromises in order to work on a commonly agreed programme.

The people who have let this country down are the so-called secular Indians who have become fundamentalists themselves.

The Janata Party merged into the Janata Dal in 1988. The Samata Party was born much later in 1994 because of extreme casteism and corruption in Bihar. The other backwards would have gone to the BJP if the Samata was not in existence. None of the casteists could see that market reform would wipe out the job benefits of the Mandal movement. It was the socialist doctrine of the abolition of castes rather than casteism, and the belief in democratic socialism that motivated not only Mr George Fernandes but also Mr Nitish Kumar, Mr Rabi Ray and others to form the Samata. Where was the pique and revenge? Over 18 per cent of the votes cast in Bihar cannot be obtained through that.

In any alliance each partners have points of agreement and disagreement which are expressed, but the basic commitment is to keep the government strong because it is bringing about changes in difficult conditions and not for the sake of power.

Mr Fernandes was never a defrocked priest. He left the seminary on his own during training because he found a wide gap between precept and practice. He wears his khadi clothes out of belief. He sticks to all his basic commitments whether he is understood and appreciated or not.

JAGDISH DESHPANDE

Mumbai

Gandhiji & conversion

This has reference to the letter of Mr Ved Guliani (The Tribune, March 6).

The whole purport of my article was to say that Gandhiji opposed mass conversion, and my quotations were designed to support that view. They are not out of context. In any case, is Mr Guliani trying to say that Gandhiji was for mass conversion? That seems to be the implication when he says that I have quoted Gandhiji out of context. Well, one lives and learns new things.

M.S.N. MENON

Delhi