Health at stake

Apropos the editorial “Health at stake” (December 17), the Supreme Court's curbs on luxury diesel vehicles is the New Year Gift to the public of Delhi which needs to be emulated in all the other major cities. But the Tughlaqi and Talibani ‘even-odd’ car formula will certainly not serve the purpose. Instead, it will play havoc with the very "exigencies" of those who own only one vehicle while making   no difference to the majority of families who already own more than one or two vehicles.  Think about the miserable plight of those thousands of people who 'up and down' the city for their daily exigencies/jobs from the adjoining areas in the absence of any just, sufficient and efficient  transport system of the governmnent.  Instead, the solution lies in evolving an intelligent system of rational rationing of vehicle run in a month, which could be, say 2,000 km per head per month, within Delhi, irrespective of the number of vehicles owned. Beyond that, a heavy tax could be imposed. The entire lot of diesel vehicles and autos, including the government ones, needs to be weeded out prudently in a phased manner, not abruptly in an overnight order after sleeping for decades over the impending problem.  Abnormal parking fees ought to be imposed as in other countries to discourage the use of personal vehicles after first endeavouring to make the public transport system world class. Then a first-slab of a very  handsome monthly conveyance allowance need to be given to the  government employees of all grades who come to work point on “cycles”. Second- slab be given to those who come using public transport.  It should be withdrawn from those who come in their personal vehicles. All sort of pressures should be put on vehicle-making companies not to bring their internationally rejected variants and to come sooner with the world class compliant and variants of Euro-V and VI (Bharat Stage V & VI) vehicles.

SHAM MURARI SHARMA, Chandigarh

Education norm good

This refers to Gaurav Singhal's letter terming fixing of education norms for contesting panchayat elections in Haryana as going backward (“No logic here”, December 17). What a strange logic! In fact, these should be applicable to assembly as well as parliament elections. A beginning has to be made from somewhere. If he himself was not literate, he could not have expressed his views here. In our country, everything progressive is resisted due to vote bank politics.

IPS ANAND, Gurgaon

Voting right

Making education and having toilets compulsory for exercising constitutional right of voting is surprising. Providing education and toilets to the public are not the sole responsibility of an individual. Aren’t the authorities responsible for it? What about the tribal population and nomadic races? Have the Haryana Government and Supreme Court assumed that every household in this country can build a concrete structure for themselves?

Lokesh, Mandi

Holidaying, perpetually

This refers to the December 16 news about Punjab holidays in 2016. It will be a holiday every third day in the state. Apart from 52 gazetted and restricted holidays, there will 52 Sundays and Saturdays. For more than one-third of the 365 days in the year, work in Punjab offices will come to a stop.This is another appeasement apparatus the Badals have deviously designed to barter for government employees' votes in 2017. It may just be the bad luck of the  people of Punjab that when they go to any office, they will have to return without their work done, either due to closed offices. 

PL Singh, Amritsar

Policing in India

The article on what policing in India needs to be by Farooq Ahmad (December 16) is an indepth study on the working of the police in India. Recently, I was in Adelaide (Australia) where one of my former students was undergoing police training. He told me the startling fact that the Indian police had been established by the British by the Police Act of 1861 not for the citizens, but for slaves! Secondly, in Australia, there are no IPS officers as in India. In Australia, every police officer has to start his career with the rank of sepoy. The writer correctly says that regimental thinking and "ji-hazoori" training must be dispensed forthwith and that police in India "must recruit experts in micro-facial and body psychology to determine if a suspect is lying or not.  

Baljit S Mann, Bathinda 

Shut CM window 

The CM window, an ambitious project of the Government of Haryana, was started last Christmas with the aim of providing an easy platform for the public to get redressed their grievances. The government should celebrate its first anniversary by felicitating all those whose grievances have been redressed satisfactorily, if not completely. But it is highly doubtful if they would be able to find a single such client from each of the 21 districts of the state. The attitude of hostility of the executive and bureaucrats towards this project is responsible for its total fiasco. The format of the project was designed as per the convenience of the executive or the respondent and deliberately no provision of feedback from the client was ever made. The complaints or representations so received were made to travel down the hierarchy so as to reach the defendant who unilaterally, without giving any hearing to the client concerned, declared the complaint as baseless and hence recommended for filing. The same got endorsed by the respective higher offices who disposed of it as such, delivering the message on mobile ‘aapki samasya ka samadhan ho gaya hai’ meaning ‘your problem has been resolved’ If the problems are to be redressed this way, the scheme should shut it down on its first anniversary and the budget allocated to this project saved to fund any other welfare scheme.

SL Singhal, Kurukshetra 

More than a raid 

This refers to the editorial "More than a raid" (December 16). The CBI's search of the office of the Delhi Chief Minister's Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar in an alleged corruption case seems to embarrass Arvind Kejriwal. Are all other bureaucrats at the Centre and in states lily white? Corruption cases have been pending against Rajendra Kumar for a long time. The CBI will continue to be a caged parrot until it is granted an autonomy. Any government of the day is wont to use it for browbeating its political opponents into submission. The NDA government needs to deal with Arvind Kejriwal even-handedly.

HEMA, Langeri