Bangladesh
The turn of events in Bangladesh should come as no surprise to anyone who has closely followed its politics (“Students on the warpath, August 23). The violent ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina—reminiscent of the ransacking of the presidential palaces in Romania in the 1990s, and Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka in recent times—is the culmination of the seething resentment of the common man against the failure of her government to address basic issues such as poverty, unemployment, inflation and price rise, coupled with the crackdown on freedom of speech and the stifling of the media. What stands exposed yet again is the political fragility of a country that has been struggling to sustain democracy ever since its inception more than 50 years ago.
Bangladesh is a textbook example of what happens when the basic needs of citizens are not taken care of. Although an interim government has been formed, the final solution lies in conducting free and fair national elections at the earliest.
B. Suresh Kumar
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
Sheikh Hasina’s exit from Bangladesh amidst nationwide protests and suspected external conspiracies is no doubt a dramatic political turnaround and the beginning of a new chapter. While the economy prospered under her watch, democracy suffered due to her dictatorial attitude. This, coupled with corruption, uncontrolled price hike and the quota issue, led to anger from the grassroots that spread like wildfire, making her continuance in office untenable. Student protests have been a significant part of Bangladesh’s history, from the language movement in 1952 to the freedom struggle in 1971 down to the latest clashes over job quotas which turned violent, claimed over 300 lives and ultimately led to the collapse of the government.
K.R. Srinivasan
Secunderabad
Budget 2024
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has merely tinkered with the income tax rates for India’s middle class in the latest Union Budget (“The neoliberal lenses that skew the vision”, August 23). There is no denying that whatever the middle class earns is taxed far more than the super-rich and the corporates. With the prices of vegetables, milk products, cooking gas, education, healthcare and housing ever spiralling, the tax concessions given to the middle class are laughably negligible.
More importantly, with raging inflation and falling interest rates in banks and the post office, the real income of senior citizens is rapidly falling. The GST of 18 per cent on health insurance premiums paid by senior citizens is extortionate, and must be withdrawn immediately. More money in the hands of the middle class and senior citizens will only boost consumption and the nation’s GDP.
Kangayam R. Narasimhan
Chennai
Climate change
It was shocking to learn that greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere trap heat equal to the energy of nine Hiroshima bombs per second, or about 7,77,600 such bombs each day (Cover story, August 9). June 2024 broke the record of being the 13th consecutive month of above-average global temperatures.
While the resolution to limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius was adopted nearly a decade ago at the COP21 in Paris, emission levels are only on the rise. The COP27 held at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022 paved the way for establishing a Loss and Damage Fund to support poorer countries in mitigation activities, but has not made much headway in mobilising funds from First World countries.
India, for its part, has brought out several regulations to keep the greenhouse gas emissions under control such as vehicle scrappage policy, 20 per cent ethanol blended petrol by 2025, harnessing solar power on a massive scale, “Green Railways by 2030”, incentives to promote electric vehicles, subsidy schemes for installation of rooftop solar panels in 1 crore houses by 2024 and so on. I fear we will have many Wayanad type-calamities if we ignore or delay taking corrective action.
R.V. Baskaran
Chennai
