Andrew Symonds, one of the best all-rounders, has been sacked from the Australian team due to tour India in October. It is an irony of fate that two emotional and hyperactive players have been banned for their behaviour. In the IPL, it was Harbhajan who faced the music. Now it is Symonds who is facing it as he went fishing during a team meeting. Basically, it is the discipline of any player that is more important than their game on the field. It is really unfortunate that Symonds fished in troubled waters.
S Venugopalan, Chennai
Don’t go the US way
This refers to “Time to change the 3-way formula” by A K Bhattacharya (September 10). The views of author are totally misleading, anti-environment and anti-people. The average subsidy on petrol per year is Rs 20,000 per car. Since mostly rich people use cars, there is no reason for this subsidy and petrol should be sold at Rs 100 per litre. Instead, public transport must be subsidised. It is a crime to drive a car when a metro service or a suburban rail service is available. Profits earned by the Indian Railways should be used for electrification and doubling of main lines, like Mumbai-Chennai, Ahmedabad-New Delhi, for development of the railway network of suburban trains around Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune etc.
We need not ape America and its anti environment path of development. Please do not tax common people’s transport for the sake of the rich. One remembers the famous French Revolution.
Anil Pedgaonkar, on e-mail
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Double speak
This refers to “Banana Democracy” by Barun Roy (September 11). The author’s sino-philia seems incurable.
Successful organisation of a sports event does not mean a country has developed very well on all parameters so that it is worthy of emulation by “lesser” nations. By this logic, Thailand started “shining bright” and acquired a “developed” status as early as the 1970s, when the country hosted the Asian Games thrice, in succession from 1970 to 1978. Argentina became a football superpower under a dictatorship when the ruling junta concentrated on the game to divert public attention from its misrule.
The author raves and rants about “dharna manch” politics of protestors at Singur, but that’s what the masses, the proletariat of West Bengal, have been brainwashed to do after decades of Left’s (mis)-rule. Would the author still be critical of the protestors were they doing so at the instance of some fringe element of the rag-tag combination of parties collectively referred to as “Left front”? If the apology/ clarification submitted by West Bengal Chief Minister to the politburo on his “bandh” comments is any indication, then we can be sure of some more decades of backwardness probably in India and certainly in that state.
It’s really interesting to see how left-leaning intellectuals react when the West Bengal government gets a taste of its own medicine. After all, the actions for which Mamata Banerjee is being condemned have long been and are unashamedly still being used by the Left parties. So, economic reforms are necessary when communists want Tata to set up a plant in state, but disinvestment of PSUs remains an anathema by virtue of some perverted logic.
Some double speak, eh?
Ajay Tyagi, on e-mail