II

No doubt his life story, before the trial, had been a perfect fairy tale of fulfillment of an American dream: orphaned at 18, graduation from IIT-Delhi, MBA from Harvard, first non-American Managing Director of McKinsey and Co, Director of Goldman Sach’s board, Adviser to the UN Secretary General, adviser of several prestigious companies and NGOs, personally worth $84 million yet everybody is asking why did he do it? One wonders what drives men of reputation to tread an unlawful path and give in to temptation. It is a universal fact that in the minds of the richest persons, the idea of “dil mange more” develops and flourishes by leaps and bounds. For them, sky is the limit to acquire more and more money at any cost. They forget the famous saying of Kabir “ maya maha thagni, hum jaani “ and realise it only when they are trapped in the clutches of law.  The end of Rajat Gupta is as much a symbol of the great American dream as the story of several successes are. Its true that for him the loss of reputation is a far worse punishment than two years in jail.

DILBAG RAI, Chandigarh

III

Rajat Gupta had merely helped out a friend with an insider tip and asked nothing in return (editorial “A modern tragic hero”, Oct 26). He is now behind bars in a nation that swears by undiluted capitalism but equally zealous in guarding its basic tenets of fair play and transparency. The huge US-64 Scheme, touted as the common man’s mutual fund, with a corpus of thousands of crores was essentially done in by suspected insider trading, leading to large corporate redemption of over Rs 4,000 cr in April-May, 2001. It forced the mutual fund to freeze the scheme for six months. In India, the common investor, as in the case of US-64, will continue to ignore the escapades of the unscrupulous and can expect little succour from the regulators or government.

R.NARAYANAN, Ghaziabad

Road safety

In the US, the edges of the roads are made rough and the moment the vehicle veers off to the road, the vehicle starts jerking with a heavy noise so that the sleepy or a casual driver comes to his senses immediately and controls the vehicle (editorial “Rage needed”, October 27). Any chances of the vehicle hitting a pole or a tree are eliminated and accidents are minimised. The same can be done on Indian roads.

R K KAPOOR, Chandigarh

Long haul

Instead of fetching socially feasible plans, DR Chaudhry’s article “Haryana rocked by rapes” (October 19) has atoned itself as another piece of accusation on political and administrative machinery. With education and good teachers we could have transformed the male attitude and status of womanhood in Haryana, but we did not. If our women remain uneducated, unhealthy, physically weak, confined to homes and timid, good governance and even a vigil police cannot prevent rapes and honour killings

Our socially relevant interventional strategies have to be planned through brainstorming sessions by social activists, high profile teachers and professionals, which will have to be implemented with full steam for a period of at least two decades through the joint mechanism run by khaps, universities, NGOs and the media.