Letters: Modi-fied thoughts

Apropos the article "Lessons from the first year" (Line and length, July 4) by T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan, the emergence of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Narendra Modi as change agents on the Indian political scene was the inevitability forced by the methodology in governance followed by successive governments since 1970s. India would have taken in her stride issues like delay in handling hunger-related problems and to some extent even corruption, if the political leadership (irrespective of denominations) had not been dominated by greed and total neglect of the masses, assuming voters can be 'handled' once in five years by promises and sporadic sprinkling of money accumulated in accessible pockets during the 'previous five years'.

AAP proved that an election can be fought and won without the support of a government 'somewhere in power' and Modi declared that political leadership need not be hereditary. Both the AAP and Modi era may finally turn out to be passing phases in the long political history of the nation. But the lesson they taught, namely, that power is not only about money, but has something to do with the people's confidence in the system will remain.

My rural instinct, on a day the front page report in this paper screamed "Nearly half the rural households were under deprivation in 2011" is struggling to decipher the writer's observation that "so for him (PM Modi) development doesn't seem to mean growth any longer; it means distribution".

M G Warrier Mumbai

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