Best and worst

The former governor of RBI, Y V Reddy, was certainly one of the “Few good men” as Shankar Acharya has rightly pointed out (September 11). In spite of being demeaned as “babus” by the media, it is this bunch of talented and dedicated bureaucrats that serves the present and shapes the future of the country. Reddy’s contributions and achievements have been well described by the author and he has been rightly declared as the “Best Economic Policymaker”. While on the note of personal performance, awarding Prakash Karat the “worst” was unfair. Shouldn’t he have been awarded the “Best road-blocker award”?

M C Joshi, Lucknow

Language problem

Raj Thackeray’s clash with Jaya Bachchan for the latter’s remark on speaking Hindi is unnecessary and unwarranted. Jaya Bachchan had just expressed her willingness to speak in Hindi, as it is her mother tongue. There was no need for Thackeray to call her remark an insult to Maharashtrian people. In fact, language tells us how we are connected with other people in society.

The MNS leader has already raked up the issue of Marathi signboards in Mumbai. Even after the Mumbai police having issued a restraint order against Thackeray, barring him from making provocative speeches for a month, he does not seem to be learning from his mistakes.

If Thackeray is really serious about the welfare of Maharashtrians, he should first stop his activists from carrying out acts of vandalism. Instead, he should look at ways to improve the standards of the community’s life in Maharashtra.

P Senthil Saravana Durai, Hyderabad

Crime files

The CBI “evidently” appears to have come to a “dead” end in the Aarushi murder case, that anyway should be called the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case. Everything that can go wrong with a case has gone wrong. The Noida police trampled all over the murder scene and allowed the girl’s body to be cremated. Who knows what evidence has been drowned in the Ganga?

I wonder if any of our crime-busters have read the books, Bodies We Have Buried and Behind the Yellow Tape, both by Jarrett Hallcox and Amy Welch, who run the National Forensic Academy at Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, the world’s best CSI training school. These books are eye-openers and are a must-read for everyone because their principles, at the macro-level, are applicable to any investigation, including financial and economic frauds.

Of the real life scenarios created in these, the most incredulous and interesting is probably the famous “Body Farm”, where dead bodies, lent to the academy by relatives, are allowed to decompose to various stages so that the students work in almost “life-like” (pun unintended) situations, including getting used to the odour. The chapters on bloodstains and arson crimes are fantastic. It is a 10-week course and is the most sought after by all police departments in the US.

Do we have anything like this in India?

T R Ramaswami, on e-mail

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