Police dilemma
The article ‘Police – judiciary equation’, (March 12), is thought-provoking. The author rightly highlights the ‘pressure-cooker’ work environs of police; but his respect for ‘sane advice’ — to the police — by the apex, court to show greater sensitivity to human rights, merits contemplation. Sane as the advice is, the pressure under which police functions cannot be used as a ruse to roughshod over rights.
The higher officers should uphold the rule of law in policing, by ensuring that they do not harbour partisan bias.
By setting exemplary standards of integrity, discipline and dedication to constitutional norms, officers should unequivocally convey what they want from the subordinates and incentivise desirable outcomes from them, for effective policing.
Jose Abraham
Kottayam
Trade tariffs
Apropos ‘India working on improved tariff-cut offers for the US’ (March 12), there are already murmurs from opposition benches that India is proposing significant tariff cuts to ‘appease’ the US administration which could affect our industry and even agriculture. These voices would do well to recall the tariff-cuts of 1991 by the Rao-Manmohan Singh government (reportedly at the insistence of the IMF). They then patted themselves on the back and even now continue to congratulate themselves for the ‘opening up of the economy’ and ‘reforms’.
If such tariff cuts are ‘reforms’, they must be welcomed. In any case, Indian industry is now on a strong footing and able to compete globally.
V Vijaykumar
Pune
CSR spend
With reference to the news report (March 12) per which there was 13 per cent increase in 2022-23 in CSR spending especially in healthcare and education. This is a positive development. There is huge requirement for funds in areas like environment protection.
At present, the threshold limits include a net worth of at least ₹500 crore or a turnover of at least ₹1,000 crore or a net profit of ₹5 crore in order to compulsorily spend 2 per cent of net profit on CSR. The net worth and sales turnover limits may be reduced by half in order to bring in more companies in the CSR ambit.
M Raghuraman
Mumbai
Address male calf issue
Apropos “BL Agro to invest Rs 3000 cr…. Cow breeding, dairy tech” (March 12).
Karnataka dairy farmers are staring at this problem in their region given that a majority of dairy farmers are small and medium in scale.
With the practice of abandoning male calves by dairy farmers due to unaffordable maintenance cost, there is a dire need to address this serious issue scientifically otherwise there would illegal trading of cattle for beef production.
Rajiv Magal
Halekere Village, (Karnataka)
