Sunday, March 3, 2002		Feedback

Punjab poll: The plot thickens

THIS refers to "Punjab poll: the plot thickens", by PPS Gill (February 10). Voters these days are conscious and aware. Gone are the days when mere promises could mislead voters. Even after 55 years of Independence, there is unrest amongst the youth seeking jobs. This is true particularly of rural youth who can no longer depend on agriculture in Punjab.

Unemployment is the biggest problem to be tackled. Youth of the day is impatient and are not ready to take things lying down any more. The new generation voters will go against the establishment in the ensuing election.

Politicians cannot now escape the responsibility of ensuring primary education for every child, health care for all, pollution-free environment and a good industrial set-up. The bureaucracy need to be made accountable and efficient.

Bureaucracy and police administration needs streamlining and freedom from political interference. People do not want exemptions from payment of taxes or for electricity, but they want constant and regular electric supply and a system that works so that there is freedom from red-tapism, harassment, humiliation and corruption.

JASWANT SINGH SIDHU, Ludhiana

This refers to "Looking at childhood without rose-tinted glasses", a book extract from Ismat Chughtai’s selected writings (February 17).

Ismat Chughtai (1915-1991), a luminous and resplendent star, appeared on the horizon of the new Urdu short story. Her piercing intellect, her investigative, probing and scrutinising instinct surveyed the entire social and moral scene, which characterised the decaying and putrefying feudal society, particularly the plight of womenfolk, and she tried to recreate her complex experiences into her compact stories. She brings out clearly and often even ruthlessly the reluctance of the primitive and unsophisticated society, with an antiquated way of life, to move with the times and to adjust to the fast-changing realities of the 20th century.

It is to her credit that she absorbed, assimilated and incorporated sex into the texture and fabric, tissue and weave of her short stories. Sex, however, is only one of the many themes she has deftly mirrored. She has written more about women and their contemporary problems with an uncanny insight. She naturally observed what was not concordant with the traditional tenets of Muslim society.

Her art has such a magic that it spontaneously and automatically attracts the reader.

DEEPAK TANDON, Panchkula