False alarm; chain pulling in trains
In a video that went viral on Social Media, a senior loco pilot can be seen crawling under the train which was stranded on a river bridge from a narrow gap between the wheel and underbelly equipment of the coach in order to reset the alarm chain knob. This has averted delay in other trains and saved the time of many passengers. It is understood that some miscreants had pulled an alarm chain and stopped the Godan Express on the Kalu river bridge. While the loco pilot should be felicitated for the brave and timely action, strict action needs to be taken against the miscreants who pulled the alarm chain.
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Train passengers should realise that the alarm chain pulling should be resorted to in only emergency cases. It is learnt that 197 cases of alarm chain pulling were reported in Mumbai division of the Central Railway within a fortnight from April 16 to 30, 2022. Even though repeated announcements are made not to indulge in alarm chain pulling unnecessarily, some passengers do it on flimsy grounds.
The Railway Protection Force (RPF) needs to be very strict towards the miscreants. It seems necessary to increase the penalty for unnecessary alarm chain pulling along with a prison term. This is necessary since such activity by miscreants cause delay and inconvenience to the passengers of the entire train and can even lead to a rail accident in case another train is running on the same rail route.
Adelmo Fernandes, Vasco
Civic duty towards our towns
I read thoughtfully the Eugénio Viassa Monteiro opinion article “Making our cities attractive and friendly” (Herald, May 3). The author’s suggestions for making India’s cities more attractive and with a better quality of life, in my opinion, cover all, or almost all, settings intrinsic to the suggestions is the civic duty that must come from each citizen. And, as far as I know, this requirement is not an attribute practised in the daily life of Indians.
On the other hand, shouldn’t your proposals and exhortations, a priori, be within the scope of the duties of the local authorities – the municipal and parish councils? And with that I am not exempting the participation of each citizen in the maintenance, preservation, and embellishment of cities.
I hope, and wish, that the author’s remarks will echo and bear fruit.
J Filipe Monteiro, Lisbon
Public-oriented vital civic problems
The government is rightly pushing to switch over to EV vehicles. In these difficult financial times, besides incentives for manufacture and purchase, the infrastructure and safety aspects have to be improved. Electrical vehicles are not cheap and maintenance costs of batteries and increasing electrical tariffs are prohibitive.
Unless installation of home solar panels are affordable and the charging/catching fire problems foolproof and more importantly there is some scheme to exchange/take back the petrol/diesel vehicles, the common man will not only suffer but be saddled with rusting old vehicles causing enormous problems! Goa lacks traffic signs at speed breakers and at diversions/junctions/inner roads to indicate to especially to first timers where it leads to.
Besides monsoon problems of blocked drains and flooding, rules and laws on constructions need timely enforcement if Goa is not going to land up in hopeless civic disasters like in Mumbai and Bengaluru. A good beginning has been made with the government cracking down on massive hill cutting in Arpora. This roasting climate change should knock some sense into those sponsoring all the illegal rampant tree cutting.
John Eric Gomes, Porvorim
Red ants’ menace on trees
Last few years it has been observed that red ants have aggressively multiplied and spread on our trees, plants and have eventually started to enter homes for their food.
These medium sized red ants have spread on trees eating new flower buds of mangoes and other trees. They form nests on trees becoming resilient and surviving in all conditions. More than monkeys wild boars and other animals these red ants are a major menace on our trees and fields destroying anything that yields fruits and flowers. Their bites are also nuisance preventing people from harvesting and trimming trees.
We trust in the expertise of the Goa Forest department and ICAR research centre Old Goa to seize the hazard of these red ants and bring relief to farmers and domestic vegetable growers.
Jo Dias, Chandor
RBI’s hike in lending rates
Many commercial banks have followed in RBI’s footsteps by hiking their lending and deposit rates. The central bank had roiled the markets a day earlier with a surprise repo rate change.
The increase in lending rates will mean expensive home, auto, and SME loans as banks pass on their increased costs of funds to fresh and existing borrowers. Moreover, rising geopolitical tensions and RBI contemplating another rate hike in the next quarter could lead to more pain.
N J Ravi Chander, Bengaluru
Stage of pogroms?
India seems to be entering the stage of pogroms now as indicated by the sudden upsurge in incidents of anti Muslim violence all across the country. The present cycle of bloodshed is very different from the previous ones in that the State has abandoned neutrality and in fact is complicit by its acts of omission and commission. The PM down everyone is maintaining silence because they believe and exult in this bigoted ideology; moreover India is not worried about criticism from the west because the sense is that the western economy needs India’s huge market more than India needs the west.
The State has willy nilly become an enabler of the atrocities against the minorities, smug in its belief that no one can take action against it including the judiciary which has been reduced to being a handmaiden of the executive. With the mediocre educational standing of the general public; the Sanghis finds no difficulty in whipping up communal passions to target the ‘others’ and divert attention from actual problems like unemployment, a tanking economy, poverty, shrinking earnings, etc. The ruling party’s silence on the calls for genocide of Muslims and threats to rape their women in the so called ‘dharam sansads’ shows that the Centre has virtually acquiesced to pogroms of the minority community.
India is already on genocide watch by UN bodies and independent think tanks abroad, but do we care? We have reached a state of no return as a secular nation now. It has become a race to the bottom for what was once a vibrant democracy.
Rekha Sarin, Benaulim
Covid-19 condensed
The population in India is the highest after China and during Covid-19, the deaths could have occurred more in Indian states. Fear of reporting more cases and thus reducing the number of deaths by States caused confusion. The WHO panel, made up of international experts who have been working on the data for months, used a combination of national and local information to estimate totals where the data is incomplete – a methodology that India has criticised.
However, other independent assessments have also put the death toll in India far higher than the official govt tally. It all happened at every nook and corner of the country and people were not ready to keep the Covid-19 affected bodies unduly long time and the funeral took place without knowledge.
C K Ramani, Trichy
