The furore on Narendra Modi replacing Mahatma Gandhi on the KVIC diary and calendar for 2017 needs to be understood in the background of the officials in government seeking to please the Prime Minister in the manner of acolytes. For various reasons the head of KVIC may have taken the decision without any guidelines from the government and for very mundane reasons like seeking an extension to his term or wanting to be noticed so that he could be considered for any other plum assignment that he desires. This is being stated since you have to give the benefit of the doubt to the government and/or the Prime Minister. 

In continuation of the argument one also needs to state that Mahatma Gandhi does not have the monopoly on the promotion of khadi. As one expert said that the khadi favoured by the Mahatma and what is in vogue today is completely different. At the same time the Haryana minister who said that the sales of khadi did not increase by using the Mahatma's image to promote it is measuring the great man's contribution in a very miniscule way and weighing it on the scale of commercial success, which is representative of the mediocre minds of our leaders today. 

Srinivas Kamat,  Alto Santa Cruz

Rabid comments

Haryana government's BJP minister Anil Vij has stated that PM Narendra Modi was a 'bigger brand name than Mahatma Gandhi!'

 According  to him from the time the Mahatma's name was associated  with the Khadi industry it has failed to progress. He also attributed the continuous devaluation  of the Indian rupee to ever since the time the name and  picture of the Mahatma appeared on the currency notes. Such rabid comments from the BJP minister must be condemned in the strongest terms. He should be sacked forthwith from the government and the primary membership of the BJP as his statements are tantamount to blasphemy, in a land where  the Mahatma  is held in the highest  esteem. Or, are we to infer that this is a subtle move to 'demonetise' Mahatma Gandhi and replace him with a new Mahatma?

Robert Castellino, Mumbai

While it is atrocious that the picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has replaced that of Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation on the 2017 calendar and diary of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), what is more intriguing and shocking is the stony silence of Modi to the voices raised against this audacious move by the opposition parties besides the common man through the media, both print and electronic.

There can be no second opinion that there is no one who has the worthy credentials to usurp the place of the Mahatma, and particularly Modi who went around wearing a suit valued at Rs 10 lakhs with his name embroidered all over compared to the trade mark loin cloth worn by Gandhi till he was brutally murdered by Nathuram Godse, allegedly a baudhik karyavah (intellectual worker) in the RSS as confirmed by his brother Gopal Godse in his interview with the Frontline magazine.

Tharcius S.Fernando, Chennai

Going through to your edit in Let’s Talk, there is all confusion among all the parties, the proposed alliance of Congress, NCP, GF, UGP is not going smoothly. All are power hungry and there is no sanctity among them. They project themselves elected  before election. We are confused to whom to vote.

If they go on fighting before elections are held, what they will do after they are elected, they will fight for the chair. It is better to knock them down now and give chance to new faces in new parties. Three candidates of NCP have already joined  another party which has no political roots. They are fooling themselves and make us fools to watch their tamachas of friendly fights. There is confusion in the BJP too. BJP mandals gave ultimatum to the BJP boss and they have threatened to leave the party if ticket is not given to the  to give sitting candidate of Canacona is  there no other  better candidate  to contest? 

All of them are thinking that they are bosses of their parties. We do not want these bosses to fight after election, therefore we should be wise enough to reject them all and elect new faces of one boss.

Marcos Alemao, Varca

January 16th is a red letter day for all Goans in Goa. It is on this day that two Goans have brought name and fame, and gave identity to us Goans.

It was on this day, 50 years ago, that the late Dr. Jack de Sequeira who toiled to see that Goa remains a separate state through the Opinion Poll held from those traitors who wanted to merge our golden land into Maharashtra.

It was also on this day, that another son of the soil, Saint Joseph Vaz whose feast we celebrate today, as the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Goa, is too remembered. As the verdict of us Goans is due in the next few weeks, when we cast our valuable vote, let us discern and introspect ourselves as to who will be the right persons to save our golden land from further destruction. May these two souls guide us to make a right choice and save what little is left so that our next generation will eat the fruit of what is leftover by our corrupt politicians who for the past years worked only for their personal gains.

John Rebello, Old Goa

When Modi Sahab demonetised Rs 1000 & Rs 500 currency notes and instead offered us a barely exchangeable note of Rs 2000 and a non existent new note of Rs 500, a great number of citizens were put in an inconvenient position of standing in long queues before the bank counters. 

With demonetisation most of us were also thrown in a quandary of listening day in and day out to figures like K crore and lakh crore being rather an asymmetrical system of enumeration.  

On Nov. 8, the total value of currency notes in circulation was about 18 trillion out of which about 86% consisting of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes amounting to Rs 15.44 trillion were declared null and void.

Now it would appear that according to Bloomberg Service about 97% of the scrapped noted have been deposited back in the banking system, leaving a paltry Rs 47 billion  outside the banking system. The Bloomberg estimate could be either right or wrong, but the silence of the Reserve Bank of India does not augur well for the integrity of the Indian financial system in the world capital markets.

A C Menezes, Chinchinim