MyVoice is to lift up the voices and experiences

Carelessness causes accidents

In a tragic incident, about 30 people lost their lives during Ganesh idol immersion in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, when the boat they were in capsized in the morning.

Though the local administration took part in rescue operations in the right earnest, they could have prevented such a tragedy, had they taken precautionary measures. Everyone knows that such accidents happen in India during festivals.

There is nothing new, but the question arises as to how long such heartbreaking accidents will continue. If we consider the reason behind such incidents as the negligence of the administration, this is not completely true.

People are also reckless in such incidents. Sitting in boats and vehicles more than their capacities is some of the things that people often do and then have to suffer. All of us should strive to be vigilant and alert in crowded places and do not do any work that may cause accident.

Vijay Mahajan Premi, Hyderabad

Fear created by scrapping of Article 370

The abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A has created such a shock and awe among people of Jammu and Kashmir. The immense suffering of the Kashmiri people, far from being something that should arouse opposition to this measure, becomes, in this reified world where everything appears in an inverted form, an index of the courage and determination of the 'saviour', a cause for applause.

True, there is a communal angle to the Kashmir development and to the backing it has received from many, but that is not all: there is a dialectical process of reification, leading to loss of 'agency' by the people on the one hand, and a strengthening of the position of the 'saviour' on the other, that is also at work.

In fact, if because of the suffering of the people, the incidence of terrorist acts in the valley increases, then that will be used as retrospective justification for the 'saviour's' decision to have abrogated Articles 370 and 35A.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's massive victory in the elections also owes much to this dialectic. The people, existing within this reified universe and goaded by this fear, used their transient 'agency' as voters to surrender their perennial 'agency' as political thinkers and activists to the 'saviour'.

Why such a dialectic gets going is a matter that need not detain us here. Many believe that the economic crisis will break this dialectic and make people reassert their 'agency'; this is likely, but there is no automaticity about it.

This dialectic will no doubt end sometime, and a reverse dialectic set in that re-establishes the spirit of democratic assertiveness of the people. Until then, however, one just has to resist this all-pervasive fear.

Ashok Kumar Dannamaneni, Vikarabad

Pakistan's lies and little known facts about J&K

It is ironical that Pakistan is shedding crocodile tears at what India has done and claims that its heart is bleeding for the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

How has it treated the people of the State who have remained under its illegal occupation all these years? The so-called Prime Minister of the so-called 'Azad Jammu and Kashmir' sits outside the office of the under-secretary of the government of Pakistan in Islamabad waiting to be called in by that potentate?

What is even worse and completely immoral is that Pakistan has transferred an area of over 5,000 square kilometres of the old riyasat to China in 1963 completely illegally. Pakistan is very fond of describing the issue of Jammu and Kashmir as a 'dispute', although in document after document signed by it with India starting with the Shimla agreement it has accepted it as an 'issue'.

But if, according to Pakistan, it is a 'dispute', how on earth has it ceded a part of this disputed land to another country? It is like someone occupying a part of my land illegally and then transferring a portion of it to someone else.

China is equally guilty of taking possession of disputed land from someone who did not have title to it. Completely illegal, completely unacceptable. We claim, and rightly so, that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

The UN resolutions on the subject became infructuous when India and Pakistan signed the Shimla agreement in 1972. It has been reiterated time and again as a bilateral issue in all subsequent documents signed by the two countries.

Yet, Pakistan repeats the UN resolutions ad nauseam hoping that a lie repeated a thousand times would be taken as truth. We must guard against it. The international community is often ill informed about Jammu and Kashmir.

Akhilesh Akula, Hyderabad