Do better

Sir — On Thursday, during India’s fourth Test against England, Virat Kohli overtook Sachin Tendulkar to become the fastest cricketer to score 23,000 international runs, achieving the feat in just 490 innings. Making the milestone even sweeter was the fact that he hit the fateful runs off his arch-nemesis, the England pacer, James Anderson. However, these are just personal records; Kohli has, of late, been struggling to perform as a batsman. The upswing his career took in 2016-17 has not been replicated in recent years. Even though he is one of the greats of the game, Kohli needs to reflect on his identity as a captain and ace batsman, and live up to his reputation.

Shekhar Kundu,
Mumbai

Huge waste

Sir — It was shocking to read that even in a developed nation like the United States of America, at least 15.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been wasted since March. Such huge wastages are attributed to factors such as damaged vials, errors in diluting the vaccines, problems related to freezing, hesitation among the public with regard to getting vaccinated and so on. The shock at the news stems from the fact that many nations around the world are finding it difficult to acquire enough doses to fully vaccinate their populations.

As far as India is concerned, although there are reports of vaccines getting wasted, it is also a relief to hear that several states are attempting to make full use of their vaccine stocks. Public awareness, hassle-free distribution, good storing facilities and the administration of vaccine doses in the most meticulous way can certainly prevent such precious resources from being wasted. The Central and the state governments also have a vital role to play in ensuring that Covid vaccines — on which the global population as a whole is depending to eventually bring about an end to the pandemic — are not wasted.

M. Pradyu,
Kannur

Sir — With the horrors of the second wave of Covid-19 in India — including the acute shortage of vaccines that many states complained of at that time — still fresh in our memory, it was deeply distressing to learn that the US has wasted more than 15 million doses of the Covid vaccine since March. While some vaccines, especially those that are produced in bulk, are bound to be destroyed — vials can break or the viability of the medicine can get affected during transportation — there is no good excuse for a nation like the US, with all its resources, for wasting such large quantities of a vaccine that is so highly coveted by less-privileged nations around the world. It was reported in March that the US bought enough coronavirus vaccines for three times its adult population, effectively creating shortages for poorer countries. To waste such a valuable drug is nothing short of criminal.

Anindya Basu,
Calcutta

Hard to tell

Sir — In the last 11 months, the collection of the goods and services tax has mostly been over Rs 1 lakh crore, with the federal government attributing the development to a speedy financial restoration and improved compliance ranges. Economists, however, are unable to analyse these tax numbers as a lot of important information is not being shared by the Centre.

Till December 2020, when the month-to-month GST collections had started, the official assertion from the Union finance ministry often included particulars of the variety of the GSTR-3B returns filed by taxpayers as well as a state-wise break-up of revenues. Now, the state-wise income tendencies have been shared for less than four of the eight months since then. The final month for which the federal government shared the variety of the GSTR-3B returns — abstracts of an agency’s GST liabilities for every month — filed was January. A professor at a Delhi-based financial analysis institute said, “With the present particulars accessible for GST, there can’t be any type of evaluation besides to say the revenues went up or down”. How, then, are economists supposed to form an accurate picture of India’s financial recovery, or ascertain if there has, in fact, been any significant recovery at all?

Bhagwan Thadani,
Mumbai