MyVoice: Views of our readers 20th July 2022

Testing time for students

It is a very bizarre, horror and shocking incident and sounds very ridiculous and reprehensible that girl students in Kollam district of Kerala who appeared for NEET exam were made to remove their inner wear before entering the exam hall.

It is very unfortunate and shocking incident for hundreds of girls has gone for trauma for three hours sitting with male students and male invigilators. It is very horrific incident for the girls as their excitement for appearing for NEET exam turned into a trauma. The girls were dressed as per the dress code and the exam bulletin didn't mention about inner wear. This was the huge error on the part of National Testing Agency which has led and impacted the mental bearing of the students while writing the exam.

Students were also forced to remove their jewellery when they were unable to open the jewellery it was cut. Boys who were in full sleeves were forced to cut their sleeves to half. For not abiding by the rule they were told that they cannot sit in the exam and poor students had no other choice. Strict action should be taken on those who enabled this rule. Kudos to the father of girl who gave police complaint and also for moving the Human Rights Commission.

Zakir Hussain, Kazipet

Rupee tumbling, govt fumbling!

The rupee is now at its weakest ever; it has breached the psychological 80/$ mark. It has lost about 7% of its value against the dollar in the last six months. It is a clear sign that the economy is not doing particularly well. The depreciation of the rupee paints a gloomy picture of the current economic climate. There are both external and internal factors contributing to the runaway decline in the rupee's value.

It is important to analyse why foreign investors are pulling money out of India and fix the problem. It is important to bridge the trade deficit by increasing exports. Fluctuation in the rupee's exchange rate frequently occurs as a result of the free play of market forces. This being so, we have to put in place a robust mechanism to check it.

The government appears to be clueless about tackling rupee depreciation and the associated vicious spiral of rising prices. It appears to be fumbling when the rupee is tumbling! When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was Gujarat Chief Minister, he attributed the fall of the rupee to the corruption of rulers. He even held that the fall in the value of the rupee was measurable in proportion to corruption.

Now he conveniently maintains a studied silence on the rupee's plunge into a record low; he omits to mention it in his public rallies and mann ki baat. The outlook for the Indian currency regaining its value may now look bleak; still the government must do all that it can to prevent further depreciation of the rupee to ensure 'ease of living' for the aam aadmi.

G.David Milton, Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu

Chess tourney in Chennai

With the 44th Chess Olympiad to be held at Mahabalipuram near Chennai from July 28 to August 10, it will be the biggest ever sporting event held in India and that too in Mahabalipuram. The search then began for a suitable venue when Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, a keen sports lover, stepped in and approved the project in 48 hours for the Olympiad to be held in the state. It is somehow fitting that Chennai will be hosting the event. It has produced Vishwanathan Anand and a series of grand masters in chess arena.

M R Jayanthi, Coimbatore

Nupur Sharma is being hounded

This refers to news of former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma filing a fresh petition seeking her withdrawn petition for clubbing of FIRs lodged in several states over her remarks on Prophet in a TV debate show. Sharma has also sought expunction of adverse remarks made by a vacation bench of Justice Surya Kant and J P Pardiwala who refused her plea in this regard on July 1. It is interesting that the same bench is scheduled to hear a fresh miscellaneous application of Nupur Sharma. It will not be out of place to add that Nupur Sharma did not say anything adverse or in addition to what is already documented and know about Prophet Mohammed that has been referred by several Muslim scholars on different occasions, during their debate.

Venkata Narasimhan, Madurai

Social media and human rights

Recently, the research done in our nation by Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) agency on the Meta platform, which incorporates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp discovered that these social media is exposed to higher risks of human rights including limitations on the liberty of expression, information and risk of hatred that ignites malevolence due to the actions by third parties which largely appearing terrifying now .This unprecedented in depth research reports seems to be intimidating not only to Meta platform but also to other social media platforms. Furthermore this research report is exclusively of our nation. To overcome this HRIA has to develop recommendations regarding incorporating, monitoring, content moderation, product interventions and many more so that Meta platform can study them and use them as a regard to identify and guide relevant actions which fixes the issues swiftly that are reported as of now.

H K Vijaykumar, Raichur