When leaders visit another country, their spouses usually accompany them and even help them co-relate by performing some friendly side tasks. However, our PM travels starkly alone. It does reflect on our country’s attitude towards women, when even Modi had to have his thumb twisted by the EC to admit that he was married. Her pathetic interview on TV was heartbreaking. Then we had our own bikini brothers who, rejecting all references to science, try to drown our women on our beaches in overwear. This Gandhi Jayanti let us improve our mindsets towards women instead of sweeping our shortcomings under the carpet.
Dr Carmo Costa – Viegas, Assolna
Magnificent Mary shines again
The indomitable spirit of super-mom Mary Kom was once again on display at Incheon. Mary, mother of three, out-punched her Kazakhstan opponent to bag her first Asiad boxing gold. In addition, Mary Kom has a bronze at the Olympics and five Golds at the ‘Worlds’ — a phenomenal achievement considering that boxing is a very punishing sport.
Sarita Devi, however, appeared to have been robbed of an appearance in the finals by the ring judges. While most sports have made the scoring system more attractive and spectator friendly, boxing has done the opposite. Under the pre-2012 transparent system of ‘running scores’ (such as in other contact events like judo, wrestling, karate etc,) Sarita would have won hands down.
Prof Robert Castellino, Canangute
Unreasonable measure
A committee appointed by the Union Health Ministry has reportedly suggested increasing the fine for smoking in public places from Rs 200 to Rs 20,000 and banning the sale of loose cigarettes. That is a whopping increase in the fine. Increasing the fine to such an extent could have a negative impact. Smokers could be offering bribes if caught smoking in public to get away from the massive fine. It must be said that the ban on selling loose cigarettes can also have a negative effect. Someone who is a casual smoker will now have to buy a full pack of cigarettes instead of buying a single cigarette. The person ironically could end up smoking more than one cigarette and could ultimately even become a chain smoker. And what about putting a ban on chewing tobacco? It must be said that it is much easier to catch someone smoking in public than someone chewing tobacco in public. Chewing tobacco like gutka, zarda is more carcinogenic than smoking cigarette. A stiff fine is also essential to be imposed on those chewing tobacco.
Adelmo Fernandes, Vasco
Accountability is the key
The Swachh Bharat campaign undertaken to clean the St Inez Creek by Water Resources Department in association with the Directorate of Fire Services and CCP is a good beginning, provided this cleaning is undertaken on a regular basis and the citizens, especially, the migrants and local tourists are sensitized on the issue. Otherwise this exercise will be an exercise in futility and all the money spent will go down the drain (read will flow through the creek). Will calling upon government servants to clean their offices for two hours on Gandhi Jayanti lead to Swachh Bharat? Yes. A beginning will be made but, will the government offices remain clean and swanky? No.
What is needed is refurbishing of all old offices and regular sanitary inspections carried out by heads of departments. For successful implementation of Swachh Bharat, accountability is the key especially of the holding high posts/offices.
Glocerio Fernandes, Velim
Stop communalizing India
Few days back BJP celebrated its 100th day of governance. From then, till now if we had observed our newspapers and national media, we could have noticed that different people, different groups or different leaders are trying to cultivate a single issue among the citizens, by giving different titles like love Jihad, Hindu Rashtra, Madrasa conflicts, etc etc.
A single title we could give these issues is communalism. Being the citizens of this secular country, we elect our PM so that he could lead our country towards prosperity by adhering to its democratic rules. But some Indians are trying to create quiet silly, unreasonable, unrealistic obstructive issues which are creating a great barrier for maintaining peace in this country and thus affecting or hindering our country’s development.
Meenaz Bhanu, Margao
