tribuneindia...Mailbag

PLEASE refer to the news items in your newspaper, “Tibetan Protest at Embassy” (Jan 7) and “Security at Chinese Embassy up” (Jan 9).

A handful of Tibetan splitists stormed the Chinese Embassy. Some of them, along with an Indian photographer climbed over the embassy’s main gate, shouted anti-China slogans inside and others, just 20 to 30, burned two Chinese flags outside in front of the main gate.

What was the police doing? Only watching the show silently, according to a pre-planned design of the hardliners of the ruling coalition? And also, what a mockery of the adherence to the principles of the Vienna Convention on consular relations?

The premeditated anti-China demonstration had open encouragement from the ruling coalition, when these Tibetan marchers were flagged off from different cities by their MPs and other senior leaders. This is so in spite of the promise of the government not to allow self-exiled Tibetans to hold anti-China political activities from the Indian soil.

The Sino-Indian relations are touching a new low since the taking over of the reigns of power by the BJP-led coalition at the Centre.

There is need for serious re-introspection of the strategy towards China by the Union Government. Both India and China are two great neighbours with ancient traditions of friendship. It is in their interest that they rebuild a good relationship. They should get down to cooperation rather than fritter away their energies in harmful pursuits. The Indian Government needs to do it all the more.

A DoT too much

I have become increasingly angry at not being able to connect to the Internet for days at a time. I have been experiencing all kinds of problems. Sometimes the dialled number rings until it rings-out without a connection. Surely if a hunting system has no free modem it should give an engaged signal. At other times it is engaged and on those rare occasions when a connection is established, modems often cannot connect to the server or the system proceeds to drop the line after just a minute or so. Each time this happens of course I am charged for a fruitless call. Something must be seriously wrong and I feel cheated that I am asked to pay for a system to which I cannot connect other than occasionally at 6.30 am and for short periods. There must be hundreds like me. The system has become even worse lately and I feel that some investigation should be made to find out what is wrong. I have one or two remarks and suggestions which DoT might like to consider.

* If they have oversold their system capacity, is it not a blatant fraud on the subscriber? And should they not either upgrade their facilities immediately or disconnect those subscribers who have been given connections since their announcement some months ago, that they were discontinuing accepting new subscribers to the service?

* Can a check be made on unauthorised usage in Departments of State Governments and others? Could it be possible that most of the protracted access which uses up bandwidth is against state government accounts yet originates from private houses and perhaps elsewhere? Also, now that some state police are supposed to have gone “Hi Tech”, a drollery that makes the mind boggle — hundreds of policemen sat in their little huts dotted here and there ogling the Net. No wonder we can’t get connected.

* DoT’s security system is obviously poor. One is asked to change their password every few weeks. This is quite unacceptable and it ought not to be necessary. Frequent changing of passwords is not a solution to the problem of security but an indictment against the department that their security is too easily compromised.

* Can the department, with all its supposed resources not have competent personnel on duty to reset modems and troubleshoot the hunting system and the server on a 24 hour basis? And can they install voice troubleshooting/help lines, publicise them and more importantly man them?

* Can they give us some information? Tell us the truth! How many fully working modems do they have, how many simultaneous calls can their system handle and how many subscibers do they have to the TCP/IP service? Frustrated users can then compile their own statistics.

Keeping quiet about the problems increases the frustration level of subscribers and will drive us all into the arms of the soon-to-come Independent ISP’s perhaps making all the DoT staff redundant within months. The only information we ever get from DoT is “Happy Diwali” and “Your password has expired.” They recently changed all our e-mail addresses, substituting “dot” for “VSNL” within the address. I ask you, “dot” in an e-mail address. They could have made it “dtel” or “deptel” anything but “dot”.

They should reflect on what happens elsewhere. The ISP to which I subscribe in UK, Demon Internet, were disconnected by BT for the best part of a whole day some time last year. BT paid them £50,000 as compensation. Moreover, my password has been unchanged for the last 10 years. Think about it DoT!

ROY EAGLETON
Chandigarh

I read the news item in the Tribune (Jan 1) that the government has reduced interest rates on certain small saving schemes to bring about parity with public sector banks and financial institutions, which offer lower interest for similar schemes.

This news is bad and sad for non-pensioner retired public sector employees. The sole source of monthly income of non-pensioner retired employees is the interest accrued on deposits (PF that the employee gets on retirement) under small saving schemes. It is very unfortunate that for a little gain the government has taken this decision without caring for the fate of retired employees — particularly non-pensioners. It has adversely affected the monthly income of retired persons. For instance, a person who is getting Rs 4420 per month from the post office as interest on a deposit of Rs 4.8 lakhs (maximum permissible limit on joint account of two) at the rate of 13% will get Rs 4000/- under downward revised interest rate of 12%. There is an unbearable solid loss of Rs 420 per month.

Innumerable private institutions are there in the market — offering 18% or even more interest with attractive gifts but the stake is too high to deposit the PF (the life saving amount) with them. This allurement of higher rate of interest has already ruined countless families. Undoubtedly, the pensioners are much better in the long run. Their pension increases as and when the government enhances dearness allowance for their regular employers. A person who was getting Rs 4000 pension per month a couple of years before is now getting Rs 5000. The prices of all essential commodities are going up and up these days beyond the reach of even middle higher class. How can a retired person with a limited source of income meet his household expenses when there are other unavoidable social obligations also in the life of a family man?

Keeping in view the fate of non-pensioner retired persons, the government should increase the rate of interest and discount on small saving deposits proportionately while enhancing the DA of pensioners to bring about parity.

	M A I L B A G	Saturday, January 16, 1999
weather n spotlight today's calendar