It is unfair to put Ajay Maken and Jairam Ramesh in the same bracket. Ramesh’s comment on India being paranoid about China (while he was in China!) was something that was totally unacceptable, since our government is wary of Chinese firms and suspects Chinese telecom equipment may have malware.
In Maken’s case, he is only expressing the view that all right-thinking individuals should hold — in the 21st century, there should be no place for caste. In any case, in asking MPs to campaign against it, he has only expressed the view held by many others in the government and the Cabinet. If the Cabinet was not so badly split on the question of including caste in the census, what was the need to set up an Empowered Group of Ministers on the subject? It is unfortunate that Maken has been asked to pipe down.
Abhay Gupta, Noida
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