Letters to the editor: We need our footpaths to walk on

This has reference to  ‘Motto: Walkable footpaths, (Sep 25).

Footpaths in Mumbai are a rarity for two reasons: they do not exist on many roads, and where they do, they are often unusable for various reasons! With encroachments, garbage cans, bus stops and hawkers occupying most of the footpath space and with the footpaths in a state of disrepair, it is no wonder that pedestrians are forced to jaywalk, dodging vehicles to survive. The absence of proper zebra crossings, vehicles stopping on the zebra crossing instead of behind it, road widening with no concern for pedestrian traffic are all indications of how the authorities pay scant regard to the rights of pedestrians. In this regard, the protest by residents associations from F-North Ward is a laudable move and this should be replicated all over Mumbai. Along with mandatory, broad and clean footpaths, we need stricter application of traffic laws to ensure that zebra crossings are respected and jaywalking stops.
—Suren Abreu, Mumbai

Public Ganeshotsav
Praveen Shetty in his letter (Sep 24) has raised some doubts about the relevance of Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav. While some bad elements in the society have entered the public Ganeshotsav and introduced elements like noise pollution, gambling, drinking and extortion for funds for the mandals, it would be foolish to throw out the baby with the bath-water. By all means remove the bad practices that have crept in over the years but the whole thing need not be given up just because we have attained freedom. Coming to the contention of Shetty that Ganesha was only a family deity of the Chitpavan Brahmin community, how come the festival is so popular among large sections of Maharashtrians? No doubt Lokmanya Tilak’s popularity contributed for its widespread acceptance, but Ganesha was a popular deity earlier too.

Secondly, Ranade was not a freedom fighter but a social reformer. I feel sorry that Shetty has made Ganesha only a Chitpavan Brhamin community deity. Incidentally, I too belong to the same community. Well, Mahatma Gandhi also wanted to wind up the Congress party after achieving Independence!
—Shreeram Paranjpe, Mumbai

II
Whatever may be the genesis of any festival, if it takes a large-scale shape like Diwali or Christmas, the overall socio-economic impact of these festivals cannot be underestimated. The scaling up of Ganpati festival in Maharashtra in recent years has more to do with the growing population and their aspirations, need for social get-together, and the tremendous commerce associated with it etc. With such huge involvement of the populace, its just not possible to change the colour of this festival. On the contrary, it is going to grow further. Yes, all that can be done is to tweak it a bit here and there on environmental and other issues. So, let’s learn to live with it.
—Shailesh Karnani, Navi Mumbai
 
India-SL relations
Shastri Ramachandran in his analytical article ‘India-SriLanka Relations hostage to Tamil parties’ (Sep 25) has branded the entire Tamil community as perverse by terming the Kazhagam parties as perverse, as there are no other parties, worth their name, other than these Kazhagams, who were either in power or in the main opposition in Tamil Nadu for the past 50 years. As such, these Kazhagams are the democratic voice of Tamil Nadu.

Just as the prime guiding principle of India with regards to Sri Lanka is just to befriend that nation although the genocidal power there has been wiping out lakhs of Tamils, the people of Tamil Nadu has only one guiding principle —  ensuring the sovereignty of the ancient Tamil homeland in that island, even if that drives Sri Lanka into China or Pakistan’s hands. Nothing worse than this can happen. It’s ironic that the Shastris and their ilk, whose policies guiding the Indian think-tank and are responsible for creating flare-ups in Kashmir and the north-east etc., are hell-bent on preserving the unity of Sri Lanka at the cost of our own national unity. Isn’t this perverse?
—Mohandas Muthiah, via e-mail

Expose the weakness
DNA deserves all the praise for bringing all the scams and misdoings in the open through the front page. First, I saw the ICICI Bank bungling and then the Nabard’s wasting of money in the name of engaging a consulting agency. And now, the exposure on coal blocks with facts and figures. It was chaos and confusion all the way from the time coal blocks were awarded to the companies in a very  haphazard manner. The government had consented to allocate the block in TISCO’s favour and on the same day the coal ministry directed CCL to hand over this portion of the coal block. It appears as though everything was fixed as in a game of cricket to make the rich richer. We would like to see more and more such investigative reports exposing the weakness in our system.
—Subbu Jayanthi, Navi Mumbai

Anna to resurrect himself
Apropos of ‘Anna to chalk out strategy with old aides’ (Sep 25), now that the septuagenarian has broken away from an unmanageable member of his former team, he will do well to start from the scratch and rebuild his original Brashtachar Virodhi Andolan on a stronger footing with support from well-meaning people like Justice Hegde. The government had been accommodative enough by giving his team the privilege of drafting a legislation which is the prerogative of the parliamentarians alone. He should also desist from unnecessary aggressive actions and pronouncements that only lead to creating animosity.
—V Subramanyan, Thane