For better or for worse

Sir — The Union food minister, Sharad Yadav, may have a point when he says that politically ambitious stars should stay away from politics (“Sharad can’t stand stars, never mind BJP’s script”, April 24). But he is being unnecessarily harsh on the residents of tinsel town. For politicians it might be exasperating to fend off the challenge from filmstars who consider politics as their alternative vocation. But if glamour sells, there can be no objection to adding a dash of it to drab politics. Yadav laments that the new entrants lack in ideology and commitment. But couldn’t the same be said of the existing lot of politicians as well? Besides, Yadav is fooling himself if he believes that the presence of a few filmstars in the Lok Sabha will turn it into a theatre and render ineffective the debates in the house. If Parliament is now a theatre, politicians should take the blame for it, not filmstars. The one change cine-stars can bring to the house immediately is a positive improvement in the look of the house.

Yours faithfully,
Jishnu Dasgupta, Ranchi

Misplaced notions

Sir — In “Outsourced by politics” (April 19), Ashok Mitra rails against the proposed move of the United States of America to ban outsourcing. For the Americans, Mitra laments, outsourcing is good economics but bad politics. Yet during his tenure as the finance minister of West Bengal, Mitra, who is an economist himself, had no qualms about rooting for bad economics but good politics.

Further, business process outsourcing and information technology enabled services are independent of the software industry. For software majors like Infosys or Wipro, these activities contribute to a minuscule percentage of their turnover. So even if the US bans outsourcing or ITES, the Indian software industry will continue to flourish, as opposed to Mitra’s conclusion that the effect on the “bubbling” software business will be severe. Mitra should understand that Indian companies are in demand not for being cheap but for their better and more efficient software solutions.

Yours faithfully,
Sunil Garodia, Calcutta

Sir — It was amusing to read Ashok Mitra’s article about outsourcing. But he should be reminded of a few things. First, out of the roughly 100 million US jobs, only a small percentage is being outsourced to other countries. Americans are enjoying a lower production cost and cheap products due to the productivity gain resulting from outsourcing. Second, US laws are vastly different from Indian ones that allow the government to torment or influence businessmen at will. If Cisco or Microsoft wishes to outsource jobs to India, the US government cannot stop them. The best it can do is stop outsourcing of government jobs. But then again, a tiny fraction of these come to India anyway.

Besides, Mitra is betting far too much on the certainty of John Kerry becoming the next US president, who, it is presumed, will stop outsourcing to India because of public pressure. Mitra has been in politics long enough to know that Kerry had to have the support of a majority of the Democrats to become the presidential candidate of the party. And Democrats are, habitually, far more left-oriented than the mainstream population. It is possible that Kerry had to decry outsourcing to placate his own party members. Once the real campaign starts against George W. Bush after his nomination in August, it is unlikely that Kerry will say much against outsourcing. This sort of backtracking is a common occurrence before the elections, and not just in the US. Contrary to what Mitra has ominously predicted, outsourcing to India will continue.

Yours faithfully,
Shyamal Pain, Calcutta

Sir — Ashok Mitra’s obsessive anti-Americanism and his zeal to denigrade all things American become difficult to digest at times. Mitra says, “As long as one is a citizen of the United States of America, even a crashing mediocrity runs the danger of receiving that accolade.” But the Nobel is not given by any American institution, but by Sweden. And there is as yet no evidence to suggest that Sweden’s Nobel committee treats the US as its most favoured nation. His other grand academic theory that “economists write the essays politicians ask them to write” is a dangerous one. Following from this, we would have to suppose that Mitra too writes under politicians’ dictates.

Yours faithfully,
Asoke C. Banerjee, Cambridge, US

All wired up

Sir — The purchasers of India Telephone cards are not getting proper services from Calcutta Telephones. The service cannot be accessed most of the time. One invariably gets to hear a female voice repeating incessantly that the service is “currently not available”. Even if one manages to get the connection, the line is usually so disturbed that one cannot continue a conversation. Is this the kind of pre-paid service Calcutta Telephones has in mind?

Yours faithfully,
Amit Mazumder, Calcutta

Sir — Calcutta Telephones is supposed to be planning to employ recovery agencies in order to get the big defaulters to pay up their arrears. But why were these defaulters allowed to accumulate so much debt in the first place? It is irresponsible of the company to continue providing services to defaulters. Why are their telephone lines not disconnected, as they are in the case of ordinary subscribers? “Recovery agencies” are an euphemism for goons to be employed for extortion.

Yours faithfully,
Subhashis Dutta, Calcutta

Sir — For the last 20 days, I have been trying to give up my Airtel connection. But I have not even managed to connect to the customer-care representatives on the numbers provided by the company. All calls to these numbers are answered with recorded music, which keeps on playing. Calling up the general Airtel numbers is no help either. My experience with the company has been bitter. First, I was asked to pay the bill amount through an SMS, but I did not get to see the bill. Next my local Airtel dealer refused to get me a duplicate bill. My complaint to the Airtel website has not met with a response till now.

Yours faithfully,
Vaibhav Sipani, Kapurthala

Sir — I recently bought a Hutch recharge card for Rs 216 that assured me a validity period of 20 days. But after recharging, I was shocked to find the term reduced to just for 14 days. The customer-care executive informed me that Hutch had decided to bring down the validity period on that particular day, and the company reserved all rights to do so. Shouldn’t Hutch have withdrawn all the old cards from the market before implementing its new rule? When the company spends crores to attract consumers, surely it has the resources to keep people informed about its decisions?

Yours faithfully,
Kapildev Gangopadhyay, Calcutta