Letters: Apt arguments

I found T N Ninan's piece, "TV anchors go to war" (September 24), an out-of-the-box and illuminative contribution to the subject of war psychosis being raked up by several Indian TV news channels, in their own ceaseless war to score TRP rating points. Almost every news channel is reaching its breaking point in the frenzy to be number one and to broadcast "breaking news" even as it is dishing out the same item for days on end! I can hardly watch them. This is in contrast to Al Jazeera, CNN and BBC, which offer an objective, kaleidoscopic world view.

A few weeks ago, there was a Business Standard editorial on how the sixties and the seventies, the "war decades" had dented India's economic progress. Ninan's piece throws light on how in terms of per capita income growth, and even water availability, Pakistan is now worse off than India. It rightly deprecates irresponsible talk by some Indian politicos and defence personnel of retaliating by abrogating the Indus Waters Treaty or endorsing "taking a whole jaw for a tooth" rhetoric. The piece advises, "Abrogating the treaty should be the last thing on our minds; what the treaty does is prevent Pakistan from blaming us for its water crisis."

If the two nations have restrained from going to full-scale war in the past couple of decades, the credit should perhaps go to the fact that both are nuclear powers, rather than believing that their leaders have matured as statesmen.

Theodore Roosevelt's advice, quoted by Ninan, "Speak softly, but carry a big stick, and you will go far", is apt here.

N Narasimhan, Bengaluru

Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:
The Editor, Business Standard
Nehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi 110 002
Fax: (011) 23720201 · E-mail: letters@bsmail.in
All letters must have a postal address and telephone number