Letters: India on course

Shreekant Sambrani's fears and despair about India's future in the article "Gandhi's truth: Then and now" (October 1) are puzzling.

India has improved and is continuing to improve steadily since the end of the Licence-Raj. The 1991 reforms allowed Indian businessmen and industrialists to perform freely according to their own abilities and inclinations in open competition with the best in the world for the first time. With the cancellation of 2G licences, the shutdown of many mines and former leaders such as Om Prakash Chautala and Lalu Prasad Yadav in jail, the days of on-record and open stealing in India are likely to end fast. If only the justice delivery process could be speeded up then India would be well and truly on the path to rapid progress.

Rahul Gandhi's outburst is only the first crack in the walls of the Bastille of unresponsive political leadership, so to speak. This crack has resulted from pressure from the India Against Corruption movement and the Aam Aadmi Party and so on. Such cracks will widen fast and much more transparent and responsive governments may be with us sooner than the author is expecting. Furthermore, a household earning Rs 1,050 a month in 1971, should be earning not less than Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000 a month today - even in sectors other than those that are inflation indexed. These households fall in the top one or two per cent of the country. If such elite complain about not being able to meet their basic needs, what will the remaining 98 to 99 per cent do?

Alok Sarkar Kolkata

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