II

Earlier, the political leaders happened to give top priority to the cause of the nation irrespective of their personal grudges or party plank. The welfare of the nation was the topmost priority but the current scenario of politics is diametrically opposed to the past practice. Our founding fathers perhaps had never foreseen that the coming generations would create such odd situations in Parliament and therefore, did not envisage specific provisions to deal with them in such eventualities, like frequent disruption of Parliament.

Therefore, in national interest either the government or the political leaders inevitably must take initiatives to evolve a mechanism to end the impasse.

HARI CHAND SHANKER, Ambala Cantt

Resource management

There are four methods of allocation of scarce natural resources — first-comefirst-serve (FCFS) method, screening committee method, tendering process method and competitive bidding (auction). The first two methods are totally and unquestionably arbitrary advocated by the proponents of crony capitalism while the other two methods must be preferred to benefit the public exchequer. Time has come to invariably adopt the policy of competitive bidding for allotment of scarce natural resources for commercial purposes. The natural resources should be used through public sector undertakings including the sale to private business houses or persons.

Dr PREM SINGH DAHIYA, Rohtak

Who will take blame?

The not-so-social act of the media and the police in Jalandhar has allegedly forced a young college girl to commit suicide when she was clicked by photo scribes in front of the cops despite her repeated pleas not to do so. Her only fault (if it is considered one) was that she was travelling with her boyfriend. Cops led by a woman inspector stopped the vehicle and told her and the boy to come out in full media glare as if both of them were criminals. The poor girl seems to have taken this drastic step to save herself and her family from humiliation. Yet some newspapers carried her pictures. Who will take the responsibility for her death — the police or the media?

RAJESH CHANDER BALI, Jalandhar

II

The Jalandhar girl ended her life owing to three reasons — the callousness of the police, the recklessness of photojournalists and hypocrisy of society whose definition of morality centres on girl-boy relationship. We tend to don the role of reformers and moralists even if we ourselves are every inch immoral. We have no respect for others privacy.

Moral policing going into overdrive to impose the feudal mindset of a patriarchal social order on the liberal young having voiceless status and the overzealous media, all joined hands in driving her to suicide. As Dushyant said, “Is sirey se us sirey tak sabh sharikey jurm hain.” (All culprits should be brought to book).

For its own credibility, the media must have a self-regulatory code, lest Oscar Wilde should prove correct, “In old days men had the rack, now they have the press”.