Wake-up call
The difficulties being experienced with Iran should be viewed as a manifestation of growing fault lines in our foreign policy. Internationally, India is perceived as a U.S. ally and the Chinese have noted this. The PM’s personality-oriented diplomacy may have been successful in creating the illusion of India’s growing international stature but it has hardly served its geopolitical interests.
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Manohar Alembath,
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Kannur, Kerala
The COVID-19 fight
COVID-19 cases in India add up to over a million and to say that the figure is only a small number in relation to the country’s total population is to be far removed from the reality of the raging and runaway pandemic and overlook the aspect of pain and poignancy intrinsic to it. As all cases are not accounted for, the real figure could be still higher. The accelerated pace of transmission without leaving any trail of source of infection is an indication of ‘community spread’ in some parts of the country. The spread has not been uniform or even too owing to many variables. However, it is cause for concern that the virus is now moving to the hinterland. Population demography and density, difficulties in practising social distancing, scarcity or non-availability of water, soap and sanitisers, and a lax attitude to wearing masks are possible factors.
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G. David Milton,
By putting greater faith on the virtues of a martinet governance, we expected the travails to end by mid-May and had even opened up advance bookings on trains. Within months however we have touched over a million cases even as a cavalier U.S. surpasses 3.6 mln. Both nations now wonder what went wrong . Neither the nonchalance of U.S. President Donald Trump nor our own hesitant approach has contributed to this serious predicament as much as our ceding of the onus of national medical care to private set-ups and the near absent centralised health system. In a pandemic, this seminal skew in the public health architecture is now proving an exponential disaster. The U.S. for all its $3 trillion (17% of GDP) spend on health care has several thousand deaths. With just 1.3% of GDP on health care, the poor state of goverment hospitals and misplaced accountability between States and the Centre, we can but hope that COVID-19 does not cause excessive damage.
R. Narayanan,
Navi Mumbai
Catch some rays
The column, “Speaking of Science” (‘Science and Technology’ page, July 19), titled “Arming India’s poor against the pandemic”, was an eye-opener. One of the sustainable methods to fight the epidemic is to enlighten one and all about the importance of Vitamin D and also providing the poor food grain at subsidised rates.
Hussain Ahmad Siddiquee,
Patna, Bihar