Daughter’s greed, father’s murder
Apropos to the shocking news report “Varca murder: Daughter arrested on charges of killing her father Trinidade Martins” (Herald 21/02/2022), is very sad. This murder has not only sent shock waves across Goa but also left senior citizens scared for their lives.
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The arrest of daughter of the deceased has dealt a mind numbing blow to the peace loving society of Goa. How can a daughter stoop as low as killing her father in sheer greed of property? Is money everything? Are blood relationships no longer sacrosanct? What kind of doomsday scenario are we a witness to?
That said, I cannot imagine the shock and horror Martins must have gone through when he saw the face of his killer – his own daughter. He would have died an extremely painful death. No human being deserves to die like he did. I pray for the departed soul of Martins to rest in peace.
Gafaar Shaqoor, Margao
Much needed educational reform
From the 2022-23 academic session students who could not get into their targeted college due to the extremely high cutoffs can now opt for admission to @900 autonomous colleges across the country. These will offer courses remotely from July onwards as the government opens up the online education sector in a major reform to achieve 50% gross enrolment ratio by 2035 in alignment with the New Education Policy 2020.Currently only universities are permitted to offer online degrees.
The new move will allow autonomous colleges in the top 100 list twice in the preceding three rankings of National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) to offer online degrees without prior approval from the UGC; eligibility for admission to the programmes will be simply ‘senior secondary pass’.
The future online education ecosystem will be built on the principles of access, equity, quality, affordability and accountability so that no student is left out of the education net for want of choices. The online degrees offered by these designated colleges would have the same value as degrees issued by physical universities; this will unlock the value and potential of a large number of high quality autonomous institutions in India and enable an inclusive, non discriminatory and egalitarian learning ecosystem. At the same time the government should ensure that colleges who would be empowered to offer online degrees do not jack up their fees to unaffordable levels. A praiseworthy move by the University Grants Commission nonetheless.
Rekha Sarin, Benaulim
Suryakumar, a good find for T20s
Kudos to Rohit Sharma and company on completing a clean sweep of the T20 Internationals against the West Indies by winning the last match at Kolkata. After Suryakumar Yadav (65) and Venkatesh Iyer (35 n.o) powered India to 184, the bowlers led by Harshal Patel (3/22) restricted the West Indies to 167.
Suryakumar Yadav’s fine show with the willow in the series enabled him to bag the man of the match and series award. The effort should help him cement his place in the shorter format and make him a certainty for the T20 World Cup.
N J Ravi Chander, Bengaluru
The importance of rail level crossings
Everyone is familiar with the level crossings to facilitate train movement by stopping road vehicles on either side of the gate. People are also aware of the overzealous, and foolish, vehicle drivers who try to rush through before a train approaches the crossings thereby endangering their lives.
More than 40 per cent of rail accidents occur at the level crossings. There are more than 30,000 level crossings across rail routes in India, both manned and unmanned the former being slightly higher than the latter.
Over the years, the Railways has not allowed new unmanned crossings and manned crossings are provisioned only as a last resort
Over bridges for train movement are replacing the level crossings. Two other solutions, apart from the over bridges, are under bridges and road diversions.
The Railways, it is said, plans to remove more than 2,500 level crossings by 2025. Between 2015 and 2020, as many as 276 unmanned level crossings were removed on broad gauge routes. Some were converted into manned crossings.
Broadly, rail volume, road traffic and road conditions determine the necessity of level crossings. Maintenance of equipment and road at level crossing cannot be overstated.
Speed beakers that are erected before the level crossings to slow the speeding vehicles should be properly conserved. Another common problem at these crossings are poor visibility.
Sudden sighting of level crossings may throw speeding vehicles out of gear. In unmanned crossings, the danger of low visibility is greater. Gates and fencing of crossings, which are prone to frequent wear and tear, require prompt attention.
However, more than anything else, patience and common sense of road users can be apt substitutes to all this.
Ganapathi Bhat, Akola
Demonitisation turned out to be a poison pill
There is no evidence to show that demonetisation has helped the economy. But five years after the demonetisation of currency notes of higher denominations there is lot of damage done and negative impact is still being felt. It led to the collapse of much of the informal sector which accounted for a large part of the economy. Millions of small businesses, which had no sustaining power, were killed off in a few days by the liquidity crunch. Even the organised sectors were adversely affected by the shortage of currency and lack of demand.
The PM had said that demonetisation was meant to flush out black money and wanted people to bear the pain for 50 days to help him deliver the India of our dreams. But it turned out to be a nightmare. Most black money provided hoarders an opportunity to turn it into white money. There was no prior consultation with the RBI, which was asked to endorse the government’s decision.
Demonetisation will also be remembered for the wrong way it was done. There was no impact on the generation of black money. But the government tried to shift the goal post and claimed that demonetisation was intended to enable a shift to a cashless economy. Its postscript pain inflicted on people, most of them poor, who were made to pay for a fanciful idea that is still hurting the country.
It was a deeply flawed idea, executed without any study of its consequences.
K G Vilop, Chorao
Constant use of smartphones, disturbing
According to an app monitoring firm ‘App Annie’, worldwide people are spending an average of 4.8 hours a day on their smartphones, which is nearly a third of their waking hours. The firm says that during last year, globally consumers spent 3.8 trillion hours on mobile phones and downloaded over 435,000 apps per minute. These findings are really disturbing, as constant use of smartphones is linked to depression, and other health complications.
The most serious, of course, is when it leads to fatalities like from distracted driving, taking selfies, etc. Getting addicted to the usage of smartphones undermines happiness, ruins relationships, productivity, and a total disconnect from the virtual world.
A nice quote on mobile phone use reads: “The idea of inventing mobile phones was to save time and money, but we are doing exactly the opposite.”
Ranganathan Sivakumar, Chennai
