National integration is need of the hour
This refers to your editorial “Humanity at stake in burning Delhi.”We all are aware that India has witnessed brutal communal violence in the pre and post-Independence era. Communal differences come very handy to such people. Small incidents sometimes lead to big riots which result in a large scale violence, loot and arson. They have always resulted in a lot of bloodshed and destruction. Man becomes a wolf to man and is out to kill and destroy. Growing fissiparous tendencies in the country must be controlled on a top priority basis. National integration is the crying need of the hour. It is unfortunate that some fanatic religious groups continue to indulge in objectionable and undesirable activities.
The people in India must come to realize that India is their own country and they have a moral responsibility to build her up into a great land. There is also a negative impact of social media in spreading rumours, disinformation, hate-campaign and fanning violence. Platforms like WhatsApp and Twitter have played an increasing role in sparking communal violence in India. Further, our police can also act much better, if there is political will and if they are given a free hand along with the implementation of recommended police reforms.
Vinod C. Dixit
Speed Post available at fraction of ordinary mail tariff
Postal tariff to mail an ordinary unreliable mail-article (local) weighing 500 gms will be rupees 125 (GST exempted) and through fast and assured delivery of Speed Post will cost just Rs 36 (inclusive of Rs 6 as GST). Such irrationality in mail-tariffs costs heavily to postal-department with premium postal-services like Speed Post not giving desired profits which may compensate heavy losses on subsidised postal-services like post-cards, inland-letter-cards, registered newspapers etc.
Postal-department has different mail-tariffs for local and non-local mail articles sent through premium postal-services like Speed Post, while it is uniform for ordinary postal-services. Premium postal-services have additive of GST, while no GST is added on ordinary postal-services. Imposing GST on selected premium postal-services is like putting revenue from one pocket to another that too with a bias between premium and ordinary postal-services. Tariffs for Speed Post and other premium postal-services should be common for local and non-local mail-articles. Tariffs for ordinary mail-tariff should be revised to rupees 10 per 50 gms or part instead of present Rs 5 per 20 gms or part. Speed Post tariff can be fixed commonly at Rs 20 or 30 (inclusive of GST if imposable) per 50 gms or part both for local and non-local mail-articles.
Foreign-mail tariffs can be fixed for 20 gms or part slab-weight independently for air and sea-surface-mail. Loss-making and unpopular inland-letter-cards should be abolished. However post-card may be retained but priced at rupee one only in meghdoot category where an appreciable part of revenue-loss is offset through sponsoring. All other types of post-cards (business or printed) can be priced at Rs 10. All postal-tariff should be in complete rupee rather than paises with tariff for registered newspapers fixed decades ago can be revised at rupee one.
Postal-department should stop delivering post-cards with rubber-stamps (printed category) to Akashvani where many regular listeners send their choices of film-songs by putting fixed rubber-stamps on ordinary post-cards which must be covered under printed category of post-cards.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
