unwarrented criticism

If by chance Fixed Deposit Receipt is misplaced or lost, Banks ask for an Affidavit on Rs 500 stamp paper to give a duplicate receipt. This is exorbitant amount for Super Senior citizens and RBI should instruct Banks to give duplicate Receipt on furnishing KYC documents. Super Senior citizens have memory issues and Banks should be more  considerate to them and should not charge such huge amounts for giving duplicate receipt

N.Balasubramanian

Democracy or Kingdom

If one applies for any post, the first few questions asked are about his qualifications and experience. If one is already working as lecturer in college, he needs to put in certain number of years in that post before being considered for promotion to Professor. Mumbai university stipulates that one has to successfully guide atleast 5 students for M.Sc. before he applies for recognition as a guide for Ph.D. But it is strange that qualifications and experience are of least important for the highest post of the country like Prime Minister, Chief Minister or even cabinet Minister.
N.Balasubramanian

Lost Bank FD Receipt

If by chance Fixed Deposit Receipt is misplaced or lost, Banks ask for an Affidavit on Rs 500 stamp paper to give a duplicate receipt. This is exorbitant amount for Super Senior citizens and RBI should instruct Banks to give duplicate Receipt on furnishing KYC documents. Super Senior citizens have memory issues and Banks should be more  considerate to them and should not charge such huge amounts for giving duplicate receipt

N.Balasubramanian

Helpful Suggestions: Football is an awful state in India. The country h...

Helpful Suggestions: Football is an awful state in India. The country h...: Football is an awful state in India. The country has not even qualified to play world cup where small countries from Latin America and Euro...

Football is an awful state in India. The country has not even qualified to play world cup where small countries from Latin America and Europe are playing.The country's rank is going down year after year. Sports ministry should take time bound action to find out the reasons for the sorry state of the game and take immediate measures to improve the pitches, coaches, infrastructure and playing skills of players. Baichung Bhutia, undoubtedly the greatest football player of the country, should be involved in this task. He should be fully supported by the government in this task.

What President country wants

President of India should be a well learned erudite scholar widely known with simple living habits and respected by people all over India. Among the past presidents Dr S. Radharkrishna and to some extent Abdul Kalam fit in this category. President should not belong any political party and he should not be a current minister. President's role comes into play only when there is a hung parliament. Non party man will make an unbiased decision at this time. Presently governors are chosen from party men and they are invariable found to perform as per the requirement of their masters. Such a thing should not be allowed to happen with president. His style of living should be simple similar to any middle class citizen. He should live in a moderately sized house of around 1500-2000 sq feet. Number of servants should be restricted to a bare minimum. He should contribute to development of country by giving suggestions for improvement to the ministers including prime minister. He should have a role in the selection of Election commissioner, Vigilance chief and other constitutional posts. If he finds misuse of CBI by the government he should immediately caution the prime minister.  He should make a foreign trip only if it bring tangible benefits to the country. He should give report of the visit to the parliament. Viewed under this context Pranab Mukherjee is a poor choice for president. We should look at a wider area covering academcians and scholars for this purpose. 

Helpful Suggestions: What President country wants

Helpful Suggestions: What President country wants: President of India should be a well learned erudite scholar widely known with simple living habits and respected by people all over India. ...

Letters to the Editor sent to Deccan Herald - Congress nominee for president´s po by Narayanan Balasubramanian

Letters to the Editor sent to Deccan Herald - Congress nominee for president´s po by Narayanan Balasubramanian

Presidnent's post for Pranab

Congress spokesperson says that Pranab Mukherji is indispensable for UPA II and cannot be spared for President's post. Then why don't they appoint him as Prime minister. A good manager is one who delgates responsibilities and decision making authority to his subordinates so that work will go on smoothly even in his absence. Pranab seems to have failed in this respect if he is considered indispensible. Government should not depend on any individual however efficient he may be.

Defeat against Bangladesh

With the king of bowling at our disposal, any total lower than 300 cannot be defended in ODI. This amply demonstrated by Bangladesh when they defeated India in yesterday's ODI. Some blame for this must also go to Sachin Tendulkar as he slowed down the rate of scoring after reaching 80 and even conceded a maidan in his anxiety to get 100th 100. Why is it that India cannot develop wicket taking bowlers while Pakistan has a crop of talented fast as well as spin bowlers? Instead of hosting IPL matches, BCCI should focus its energy and attention on improving the quality of pitches and training facilities for bowlers so that at least half a dozen quality bowlers are developed.

World cup and India

India 's showing in the world cup so far does not inspire confidence even to their die hard supporters. Their bowling, fielding and running between wickets is abysmal compared to other countries. In bowling, only Zhahirkhan looks like taking wickets. Harbhajan singh is more keen in containing batsman than in taking wickets. With such a poor bowling attack, even total above 300 cannot be defended. Given the size of the country and population, it is surprising that we are unable to develop half a dozen genuine fast bowlers while Pakistan has a good crop of fast bowlers. Even in batting, only first 4-5 batsman have come good and 6 and 7th have been a total failure. Our tail enders are not even able to last 5- 6 balls. Inspite of building good score in 40-42 overs we were short by 30-40 runs from the target. The coach and caption are responsible for guiding the players under such situations. the players should be asked tobide their time by taking singles and twos, keep the wickets in tact and go for ambitious strokes only after 47th over. Dhoni has been a failure in batting, captency and team selection.The selectors and coach should be made accountable for team's performance. BCCI should stop promoting IPL, as it kills the skills in a cricketer and lays more emphasis on money making. Instead it should put in more time, money and efforts in devloping genuine fast bowlers, wicket taking spinniners and improving fielding to world standards. Only then we can aspire to win world cup.

Free items to Citizens

Dear Editor:Free TVs and rice at Rs 1 per kg, and many other items are offered to citizens by DMK in Tamil Nadu under the pretext of welfare to people. These schemes are however financed from the development fund allocation and therefore such disbursal severely hampers the development of the state. Apart from that, such largesse fosters laziness and acts as a deterrent to hard work . Instead, the government should strive to improve employment opportunities, improve living conditions by making available water, improving sanitary, health-care, uninterrupted power, improve efficiency in government departments, Municipal corporation and better education. If at all any item like TV is to be given, some voluntary work should be extracted from the person for at least one year, like cleaning the road of debris, help traffic police in overcoming traffic jams,helping handicapped persons/senior citizens in crossing the roads , organising queue in bus stops, festivals, and a host other activities where manual help is sourly needed. Legislation should be immediately introduced in parliament and state assembly to ban disbursal of free items to citizens from state's funds

Travails of middle class in Chennai

Chennai is the only metro in India where autos do not flag down the meter and charge as per the same. Charges are decided by negotiations, heated arguments and usually in favour of auto driver. For the same distance, varying rates are charged by different drivers. Most of them are rude and impolite and mock at the passenger who negotiates for a reasonable charge. POLICE AND RTO DO NOT TAKE ANY ACTION AGAINST AUTO DRIVERS WHO DO NOT USE METER. Auto charges in Chennai are 25- 30 % higher for the same distance compared to Mumbai and Bangalore. There no taxis (black and yellow type) on the roads and only call taxis are available. Call taxis charge a minimum of Rs. 150 for distances below 5 km ; again no action by RTO/Police. In the bus, conductor sits in a chair at the back and if you enter the bus through front door, you have to wade through crowded passegers to get a ticket. This is arduous for Senior citizens and disabled. Two seats in the front of ladies row is reserved for senior citizens and handicapped but ladies who occupy this seat do not give this seat to the senior citizen standing nearby and conducter does not bother to tell them In Mumbai where buses are longer, conducter patrols from back to front to collect money and issue tickets

IPL auctions

It is highly disgusting to see huge amounts, running into crores, on the auctions of cricketiers. This amount could be more usefully spent in creating sporting pitches at various venues, develop genuine fast bowlers by adequate training at various centres, develop stadiums in rural areas and improve the lot of Ranji trophy players. Retired and aged foriegn cricketiers should be barred from this tournament. Young promising players should be encouraged. There should be a limit on the auction amount. The auction amount should justify itself by the improement it makes to the game and the country.

Helpful Suggestions: Interest in PPF

Helpful Suggestions: Interest in PPF: "The increase in interest in Employer's Provident Fund to 9.5% will be widely welcomed by Salaried persons. But Retired Senior Citizens dese..."

Interest in PPF

The increase in interest in Employer's Provident Fund to 9.5% will be widely welcomed by Salaried persons. But Retired Senior Citizens deserve greater attention. A similar increase in Public Provident Fund for Senior citizen's is urgently called for. Retired Senior citizens are living on interest from PPF and Bank FD and Senior citizen's saving Scheme (SCSS) and Post office Monthly income scheme (MIS). As inflation has gone sky high, they are finding it extremely difficult to lead a decent life with this interest income. If a separate PPF Account with higher interest rates is created for their benefit, they will get some relief. Finance minister should therefore raise the interest in PPF, MIS and SCSS

Direct Tax Code and Senior Citizen

Senior citizens have been given peanuts in the revised Direct Tax Code. The exemption limit has been increased by a paltry Rs 10000, while the inflation has gone skyhigh and Bank interest rates have nosedived. Many Senior citizens live on interest income from their retirement benfits . The least that should be done is to increase the interest rates for Senior citizens from Senior Citizen Saving Scheme and Bank deposits. Concession in Railway tickets should be increased to 50% and concession should be given in low cost airlines. Income tax exemption limit should be increased atleast to Rs. 3lakh. Finance minister should give Senior Citizens an opportunity to give vent to their problems before finalising incometax proposal.

Suicide by women

Suicide by women/girls from upper strata of society is often reported nowadays. This is found mostly among cine artistes, air hostess and models. The reason often cited is failed love affair. The story often goes like this with some variations. The girl is love with a boy for over a few years and was eagerly looking forward to marry him and have a happy domestic life. When she broached the boy for marriage, the boy was not prepared to commit himself to it. Maybe he wanted it to be a temperory flirting or he was not still sure that she will be compatible to him. Dejected and depressed girl commits suicide. This should have been prevented had she relaised how lucky she was that she found out the extent of love and commitment the boy had with before marriage. It has also given an insight to her to the boy's character, flicklemindedness and lack of commitment to values in life. If she has to come to relise this after marriage, her life would have become miserable especially if she had a child. The suicide could have been averted if her close relatives and friends have highlighted these points to her.

Cricket records

To enable Muralidaran to reach 800 victims, Srilankan caption is reported to have taken out Malinga from the attack. On an earliar occasion, Indian team caption asked feloow bowlers of Anil Kumble not to take wicket to enable the latter to get 10 wickets in an innings. Dinesh Karthik was once criticised for not giving more strike to Sachin Tendulkar to enable him to score a century in a one day match. These acts should be deplored. The game should be played in a natural way, the only consideration being what benefits team most. Supposing rain has intervened in the recent test, Srilanka might have been deprived of a win. Records or landmarks should be achieved in a natural way and without artificial assistance from caption or fellow players.

Exempt poor girls school fees

Girls of poor/underpriveleged get fee waiver in government aided schools only from 5th standard in Maharashtra. They have to pay monthly fees up to Rs 250 from 1st to 5th standard. With literacy abysmally low among girl students of poor, this sounds highly illogical. Apart from fees, there are other expenses like books, notebooks, uniforms and bus charges which lead to heavy burden and consequently to huge drop outs. If Government is serious about improving literacy, first step would be to make education free for girl students from 1st standard. The expenses can be met by creating a fund and making donations to this fund exempt form incometax