Do nothing

Sir — Daydreaming was a punishable offence a few decades ago. Children caught gazing out of the window were said to be ‘living in the clouds’ and dismissed as good for nothing. That equation has now flipped. The worry is no longer about children daydreaming, but about them staring intensely at phones and other digital devices. Young ones sitting in silence no longer means they have an active imagination; instead, it probably indicates an addiction to checking reels and notifications. As a result, parents who once scolded wards with wandering minds now find themselves wishing their children would daydream instead. In an age of constant digital stimulation, doing nothing has thus become a radical act at the risk of dying out.

Milinda Sarkar,
Calcutta

Momentous win

Sir — The Bharatiya Janata Party is in a celebratory mood after its victory in the municipal corporation polls in Maharashtra. The fragmentation of the once-dominant Thackeray and Pawar camps has weakened their grip on traditional strongholds, creating space that the saffron party has occupied with its organisational and electoral tactics.

For decades, the Shiv Sena was the last word in Mumbai; challenging it was akin to trying to tame a tiger, something no rival party could attempt. Mumbai, in the meantime, slipped into darker times, with the underworld tightening its hold and ordinary citizens living under a constant shadow of fear. The state will finally be able to breathe easier and reclaim a sense of normalcy. However, this moment warrants a word of caution. Political consolidation should not come at the cost of social and communal harmony.

T. Ramadas,
Visakhapatnam

Sir — Soon after the Maharashtra municipal poll results were declared, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena shifted its 29 newly-elected Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation corporators to a luxury hotel in Mumbai. The timing of the decision points to intense political manoeuvring as the Sena’s numbers are crucial to the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance’s bid to install its nominee as mayor. The episode has raised questions about the sense of insecurity within the ruling alliance.

Bhagwan Thadani,
Mumbai

Sir — The results of Maharashtra’s municipal bodies’ election point to a clear political trend (“Saffron wave”, Jan 19). Most regional parties appear to be on a steady downward slide. Formations that once dominated politics in the state now seem to be losing ground, with their support bases increasingly being absorbed by the BJP. Most striking is the continued decimation of the Congress.

N. Sadhasiva Reddy,
Bengaluru

Sir — The municipal corporation elections in Maharashtra have sent a sharp message to political leaders who have long taken pride in practising divisive politics. While the chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, credited Hindutva for the BJP’s big win, many were surprised by the impressive performance of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, which made significant inroads into what was once the Congress’s traditional support base, registering notable gains in Muslim-dominated wards.

However, how does one reconcile this narrative with that in Jalna, where Shrikant Pangarkar, a murder accused in the Gauri Lankesh killing case, was elected in the municipal polls? For law-abiding citizens, this feeds anxieties about the growing criminalisation of politics.

Bidyut Kumar Chatterjee,
Faridabad

Sir — The hurried tie-ups between the factions of the Pawar and the Thackeray clans promised numerical unity but ended up causing political confusion. Voters chose organisation, cadre strength and clarity of leadership over surnames and nostalgia. The BJP’s steady grassroots presence, reinforced by the Eknath Shinde-led Sena, clearly outperformed alliances stitched together for political survival. The Maharashtra civic polls have laid bare the limits of dynastic arithmetic.

K. Chidanand Kumar,
Bengaluru

Subjective feed

Sir — The findings of a study conducted by the University of Luxembourg underline that the effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence remains fundamentally dependent on the information and data supplied by humans (“Synthetic trauma”, Jan 18). When the data fed into machines is biased or subjective, AI-generated observations can have adverse consequences for humans. Ensuring that inputs are objective and balanced is thus a critical requirement.

Asim Bandyopadhyay,
Howrah

Sir — Regular interaction with AI bots is steadily eroding the already fragile boundary between human behaviour and machine cognition. When emotional responses, moral judgement and even empathy are increasingly outsourced to algorithms, we risk nurturing a form of synthetic trauma that dulls human sensitivity rather than healing it. As machines grow smarter, humans must not be allowed to grow colder.

Som Sarkar,
Calcutta

Sir — A fascinating study which examines how AI can mimic complex psychological responses through training calls for caution. These findings are particularly alarming when seen alongside reports of people creating AI personas using large language models and even marrying them, pointing to a troubling social trend.

Prasun Kumar Dutta,
West Midnapore

Quality drops again

Sir — Delhi, once again, finds itself gasping for breath as the Air Quality Index at several monitoring stations across the capital touched the severe category on Sunday. Temporary bans and odd-even formulas offer optics, not a solution.

Mohammad Hasnain,
Muzaffarpur, Bihar