:: Letters to Editor

Can India catch up with china?

Oct.14 : Sir, The world is of the unanimous view that India’s gross domestic product in the current fiscal year will grow more then six per cent and India will be the second fastest growing country in the world after China. I feel proud and satisfied that India is being noticed and talked about more often and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are recognising our rapid and continuous growth. Or should I be proud at all? At nine per cent growth, China will be growing much faster than India’s six per cent growth. China has grown at over 12 per cent for more than 20 years now while India has grown at an average of seven to eight per cent. Therefore, China is already ahead of India by at least 25 years as far as basic infrastructure is concerned. The way it is progressing, it will soon catch up with the Western countries.

Prem Chand Mohta

Jugal Kishore Das Lane, Kolkata

Put an end to brain drain

Sir, India is going gaga over Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s Nobel Prize for chemistry. But is he an Indian any more? Why didn’t he carry out his research work in his motherland? It is only because a genius cannot thrive in India. The entire system is not conducive to any kind of growth. Dr Hargobind Khurana had to leave the country to join Wisconsin University in the US and win the Nobel Prize in 1968 as an American. Ironically, the British government provided facilities and financial help to Sir C.V. Raman when he undertook his research in Calcutta. He went on to get the Nobel Prize for physics in 1930. Even Rabindranath Tagore wouldn’t have got the Nobel Prize but for Macmillan, the English publishing house, and the indefatigable efforts of William Rothenstein. The dampening red tapism, a rigmarole of formalities and an interminable labyrinth of stifling bureaucracy act as wet blankets and conspire to drive an academically inclined person out of the country for keeps. We will continue to gloat over the vicarious achievements of erstwhile "Indians", but do nothing to change the putrid system.

Sumit Maclean

Via email

 

Sir, This refers to the editorial Venki’s Nobel is time to introspect (October 9). Hailing the repository knowledge of science from the 12th century in India, I would agree with the contentions raised in the editorial that since then we had about eight centuries to find one C.V. Raman to conduct research on our own soil to win a Nobel Prize. To keep pace with global research the need for allocation of more funds in pure science, as stressed in the editorial, is keenly felt. Our country needs many more laboratories, scientists and the funds to back them.

R. Murali Kumar

Via email

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Conflict of strategies

Sir, General Stanley A. McChrystal, the head of 68,000 US troops and 100,000 Nato personnel in Afghanistan, rejected White House proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against Al Qaeda. He bluntly said that the formula favoured by US vice-president Joe Biden would lead to "Chaos-Istan". There clearly is a difference of opinion here. The general is not in favour of waiting but is pressing for up to 40,000 extra US troops to stave off a strategic disaster and set Afghanistan right. It may seal the fate of the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai.

Motupalli S. Prasad

Via email