Modi hits all the right notes
Apropos of the edit ?Rajniti vs rashtraniti? (FE, August 16), the 65-minute extempore on I-Day by the ?Pradhan Sewak? of the people, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted himself to be, missed all routine and negative ingredients of the speeches in the past and was full of positivity. It was not the politician Modi but the statesman Modi addressing the people from the ramparts of the Red Fort. In a rare gesture, he praised and expressed his gratitude to all previous governments for their contribution in nation-building. He called one and all?the political parties, the states, the corporates, the people?to participate in the task of nation-building. He called politicians to put a 10-year moratorium on communal and cast politics and Maoists and terrorists to shun the path of violence and join the national mainstream. His admiration for girls, his concern over the frequency of rapes, the lack of toilets in villages, the necessity of separate toilets for boys and girls in schools, and the killing of girls and female foeticide was followed by a call for parents and doctors to not kill girls for money; this was a commendable bit in his speech. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, Swachh Bharat, a new institution in place of the Planning Commission, are all part of Modi?s plan for a new India. Significantly, and rightly so, there was no reference of the much talked about ?Gujarat model?.
MC Joshi, Lucknow
Human activity and glaciers
Apropos of the edit ?Deglaciation dangers?, was it already not an accepted fact that human activity was causing glaciers to shrink? If it wasn?t so, then the new research should silence the climate change deniers who think the human have no role to play in climate change.
Abhay Sharma, Mumbai