MyVoice: Views of our readers 10th August 2020

AP govt should act fast to prevent hooch tragedy

This is with reference to reports on the growing number of deaths due to consumption of sanitizer in AP and also seizure of cartons of liquor bottles being smuggled from the neighbouring Telangana. Even more horrifying was the report of hooch tragedy in Punjab. The police and the excise staff are being blamed for the Majha tragedy that has claimed many lives. While the Punjab government has ordered the formation of two special investigation teams, a parallel magisterial probe has also been ordered. Police officials have been asked to furnish a detailed report on the investigations, recoveries, arrest of bootleggers, FIRs lodged and the statements of victims and witnesses. A list of the excise officials deputed in these areas and a record of the production and ownership of the distilleries have also been sought. The liquor business had gone underground during the lockdown. Shutting down of shops and vends affected not only sales, but also the revenue of States. With hotels and bars out of bounds, sales seem to have got diverted to black alleys, that too of spurious stuff. The tragedy in Punjab is being blamed on the leakage of de-natured alcohol from distilleries. Taking all these developments in view, the AP government should bring erring officials and racketeering liquor operators to book. It may require political will, but the loss of lives should be reason enough to ensure that the governments act resolutely.

Ankit Anumolu, Eluru, WG dist, AP

NEP ushers in a new era in education

By introducing 5+3+3+4 system of school education that foregrounds the inclusion of mother tongue as the medium of education and vocational education, the NEP has made far-reaching changes in educational pedagogy. School education in India has been very oppressive for children in utter disregard of child psychology.

When a child should be flexing and developing his/her muscles and imaginational buds, our system has been caging him in pigeon-holes of chairs and desks so that he/she may satisfy our whim of becoming a topper in the class. The NEP does well by liberating the pre-primary students from this tortuous ordeal. Education, they say, is an adventure of consciousness. The NEP 2020 rightly lays emphasis on the use of mother tongue in early school education. It is an acknowledged fact that a child learns best in his/her mother tongue.

By imposing a foreign language on him/her, we ask him to make a double effort: one to grapple with a foreign tongue, two, to learn something new. This is too much to ask even for adults, what to speak of a child.

Jaideep Bhosle,Tolichowki, Hyderabad

Modi and his Hindutva agenda

The foundation was laid for a huge Ram Temple in Ayodhya on August 5. The ceremony was live streamed in all channels for hours together. It shows Prime Minister Narendra Modi's power is indeed nearing absolute, now that much of the media serves as the horses on his chariot, now that the Election Commission of India is so willing to overlook his and his party's violations of ECI rules; and now that courts so often return judgments that turn out to be favourable to his cause — for example in awarding the temple property to the party who committed and/or supported a crime there; for example in repeatedly putting off hearings related to the forceful takeover and dismemberment of Jammu and Kashmir; for example in propping up long and poorly explained detentions of anti-CAA-NRC protestors and activists. Picking August 5 for the temple ceremony did not erase the fact that it was also the first anniversary of the democratic death of J&K — it deliberately highlighted it, in the most menacing way possible. It was a reminder to the Muslims of India that Hindutva is in charge, and that they should know their place in the new order. The country cheered Modi's repression of Muslims in J&K, and silently accepted the verdict on Ayodhya. What more could Hindutva possibly want?

Dr Nazneen Begum, Hyderabad