Stroke of luck

Sir — Achieving a creative breakthrough is often challenging. While lucky artists may have such a breakthrough early on in their careers, the unfortunate ones may struggle their entire lives without finding an audience. Take the instance of a 51-year-old technician employed at a Munich museum. Fearing that his chances of getting a big break were dimming, he smuggled one of his own artworks and mounted it in the gallery. This got him fired and subsequently banned from the museum. But the snub might end up boosting his prospects. After all, censored art has always piqued the curiosity of connoisseurs.

Sulagna Mitra, North 24 Parganas

Doublespeak

Sir — Attacking the United Progressive Alliance government for corruption, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, sounded the warning bell during his electoral campaign in Madhya Pradesh and said that the crackdown on graft will be accelerated if the saffron party is re-elected to power. Asking for people's support for his anti-graft endeavour, the prime minister iterated that the Centre's intolerance for corruption has frustrated the leaders of the INDIA bloc. While Modi's promise to rid the country of corruption is welcome, will his tirade be also directed against G. Janardhana Reddy, Ajit Pawar, Himanta Biswa Sarma and other political leaders who got a clean chit only after aligning with the ruling dispensation?

Modi's reign has been controversial owing to the promotion of Hindutva sentiments, attacks against minorities, and an authoritarian style of governance. The arrests of the political opponents, Arvind Kejriwal and Hemant Soren, have legitimised concerns about State overreach.

Zakir Hussain, Kazipet, Telangana

Sir — During a recent interview, Narendra Modi stressed that there has been a marked improvement in the Manipur situation owing to the timely intervention by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led governments at both the Centre and the state. The statement is both bizarre and unjustified. It was surprising to see Modi finally break his silence over the fires of ethnic violence that have been raging in Manipur for close to a year. Unfortunately, few have the spine to challenge Modi on facts.

Avinash Godboley, Dewas, Madhya Pradesh

Money matters

Sir — In "Power of the purse" (April 10), Prabhat Patnaik discussed how the commoditisation of politics negatively impacts democracy. Rich political outfits have a penchant for luring Opposition candidates, who, in turn, not only defy their political ideology but also disrespect the people's mandate when crossing over to rival outfits for personal benefits. Such manipulation of voters reduces them to passive objects.

Sukhendu Bhattacharjee, Hooghly

Vote apathy

Sir — It is unfortunate that a little more than 1.8 crore first-time voters have registered on electoral rolls for this general election ("Disinterested", April 11). This, in spite of the Election Commission of India taking steps to increase youth participation in polling. The low enrolment thus points to the failure of the poll body to get first-time voters interested. The apathy might be a result of falling education standards, migration and the increasing dependence on technology that makes youngsters live in a bubble.

Jayanta Datta, Hooghly

Elusive peace

Sir — After months of tacitly supporting Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip, Joe Biden, the president of the United States of America, recently made a U-turn and reprimanded the Israeli president, Benjamin Netanyahu, for making a “mistake” in Gaza. However, the following day, Biden vowed to provide Tel Aviv "ironclad" support amid fears that Tehran could launch reprisals for an attack that killed senior Iranian officials. Such contradictory stances indicate that America's policy concerning the Middle East is wrought with challenges. Israel and Iran must take steps towards de-escalating conflict in the region.

Jang Bahadur Singh, Jamshedpur

Flawed system

Sir — The West Bengal Higher Secondary Council has allowed students who fail to achieve the pass mark in a semester to write supplementary exams in the following semester ("Supplementary tests introduced in HS", April 9). This is antithetical to the pass-fail system and will reduce education standards. Moreover, students will be stuck — reappearing for exams to clear their backlogs — and will lose crucial time.

Shyamal Thakur, East Burdwan

Swift delivery

Sir — The Indian Council of Medical Research deserves plaudits for conducting a successful trial run to transfer time-sensitive tissue samples from a peripheral hospital in Karnataka by a drone in the middle of an ongoing surgery to decide whether the biosample was cancerous ("Surgery stuck ? Drone to the rescue", April 11). This is a significant achievement in the use of drone technology in the surgery sector.

Bal Govind, Noida