Letters to the Editor — November 21, 2020

The ‘excesses’ of India’s broadcast media are on the rise as seen in the shrill tone over the Tablighi Jamaat event, the mystery around a young Bollywood actor’s passing and another actor’s tirade against the system she is in. These are only a few examples. Though there is a self-regulatory mechanism in the country to deal with departures from normative journalism, it is startling that even the highest court of the land is unconvinced of its effectiveness.

The crux of the problem is that neither the government nor courts have succeeded in drawing a line between ‘free’ speech and ‘hate’ speech. Consequently, a hate speech culture has been making inroads.

The top court needs to prescribe stringent guidelines for the broadcast media (Editorial, “Curbing on-air bigotry”, November 20).

Malappuram, Kerala

Effectively, the presence of NPAs beyond the tolerable level in the loan portfolios of banks are the pivotal triggers for financial distress. NPAs are considered major impediments to priority sector lending by banks. Further, various studies have established that a chunk of NPAs are high value loans. The recent Yes Bank fiasco points to this. Hence, there must be a regulatory surveillance mechanism to pre-emptively capture these debilitating trends in a bank’s functioning and to alert its clientele before it actually slips into the critical stage of a moratorium. Supervisory oversight should be 24X7. Arguably, frequent incidents of financial distress will impact depositor confidence.

Kanuru, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh

In the current atmosphere of financial uncertainty and insecurity, if reputed banks too are unable to guarantee investors as being totally safe and trustworthy investment channels, confidence in the banking system will vanish.

Chennai