Accident Prevention
It is extremely important for people of any country to work together for constructive programmes which benefit all sections of society. Accident prevention is one such area in which very broad unity of various sections can be achieved, overcoming political and other differences. Of course for effective action on accident prevention several strong vested interests have to be challenged and so certainly there will be controversies but at the same time accident prevention is certainly an issue on which a very large number of people can come together, overcoming other narrow considerations which divided them. As people learn to overcome some other differences to work together on such a constructive issue this may open up other possibilities of better understanding and working together and on the whole this may be quite good for democracy.

But the more specific issue is that there is tremendous unrealised potential of very significantly reducing human distress first and foremost by accident prevention and secondly by ensuring timely and proper medicare to all accident victims including those from weaker sections. To realise this enormous potential first of all there should be a strong national level campaign for increasing safety consciousness at all levels. Secondly the government must put in place a comprehensive policy and programme on accident prevention and management supported by legislation to create a National Accident Prevention and Management Authority with branches and sub-branches in various states and districts. It is in this wider framework that broad national unity for prevention of accidents can give very good results in a relatively short time.

In India earlier people had good traditions of working together on such issues but after the leadership of the freedom movement passed away there was more bitterness in the political divide and the opportunities of working together on constructive issues were reduced. It will be good to revive this tradition of working together on such a crucial issue as prevention of accidents.
Bharat Dogra, New Delhi

Udta Punjab
Everyone knows that unfortunately large section of youth and even school-going children have in Pubjab become drug-addicted, this being the reason that despite the big Modi-wave across the country- in last 2014-elections to Lok Sabha, BJP-Akali Dal combine could not fare well with even BIP stalwart Arun Jaitley losing the elections.

Films if produced with good intentions, tend to induce reforms by highlighting the evils in society. Even TV serials have scenes of practical day-to-day life of society-members, and highlight prevailing evils with an aim to reform the society. Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) should review its decision of censoring 'Udta Punjab' either in title or in contents. However certain scenes if really desired to be censored for other reasons may be cut but keeping in view that highlighting drug-menace in Punjab is no reason for censoring the scenes or title of the film.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal, Delhi

Name & Shame
It refers to Chief Information Commissioner of India on Saturday 23.04.2016 in the seminar conducted at Lucknow by People's Right-to-Information alleging some petitioner having filed 600 petitions at Central Information Commission out of which several were mischievous in nature. It seems that the data is for undecided petitions where earlier some petitioner even filed about 1400 petitions (decided) just for creating a sort of record! However if CIC is so much definite about petitions being mischievous, name of the concerned petitioner should be put on CIC-website under 'Name & Shame' policy so as to discourage misuse of RTI Act. Even public-authorities will be benefited by not involving much time in handling such petitions. There should also be some mechanism whereby public-authorities may inform CIC about some habitual petitioners filing number of useless RTI petitions regularly thus wasting precious manhours and postal-expenses of public-authorities.

Despite Chief Information Commissioner giving much attention on administrative functioning of CIC, it remains amongst worst-rated public-authorities of India not even caring for DoPT circulars. CPIOs at CIC respond in years that too totally unsatisfactorily with even first appeals decided much beyond stipulated (30+15) days. For example, CPIOs at CIC have no knowledge about DoPT circular dated 06.10.2015 which mandates for compulsorily giving dates of RTI petitions and their receipts, landline-numbers and official e-mail IDs of responding CPIO/FAA and of next Appellate Authority apart from giving reasons for not disclosure of information claimed exempted! CIC-website should incorporate subject-wise compilation of all DoPT circulars on RTI and of all subject-wise verdicts from Supreme Court and High Courts on RTI.
Subhas Chandra Agrawal, Delhi

Vanishing Congress
The second largest political party Congress having ruled the country for almost six out of seven decades after independence, is showing signs of fast vanishing with its supported candidate for Rajya Sabha elections from Haryana lost because of alleged 'deliberate' invalid voting by party MPLAs. It is mainly due to the fact that party has by practice been dependent on dynastic politics of Nehru-Gandhi family except for a brief spell of Sitaram Kesri as Party-President and PV Narsimharao as Prime Minister.

Instead of projecting next generation from Nehru-Gandhi family as the only possible political heirs to take command of the party, Congress instead should experiment for altogether new type of politics in the country by handing over command of party-affairs to highly-talented youth with bright academic carrier rather than political professionals coming from political families. It should take defeat in Rajya Sabha elections from Haryana as a lesson by strongly advocating for a consolidated package of massive poll-reforms which may primarily aim for cleanliness in political system, and ending dynastic politics.
Madhu Agarwal, Delhi

Law has no Religion
According to a report in the "Hindu" newspaper of 12 June 2016, Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson Abhay Vartak said that he is "sad to see that Hindu organisations [are] being targeted in spite of a Hindu government being in power". He should be told that the law has no religion and that the law is above the government in power. A man who kills another human being is a murderer, plain and simple, and he is liable to the same punishment regardless of his religion. It is of course characteristic that Hindutva people should expect to be above the law when their people run the government.
Mukul Dube, Delhi

World Blood Donor day
World Blood Donor Day is celebrated every year on the day of birthday anniversary of Karl Landsteiner on 14th of June in 1868. This event celebration was first started in the year 2004 aiming to raise the public awareness about the need for safe blood donation (including its products) voluntarily and unpaid by the healthy person. Blood donors are the key role players at this day as they donate life-saving gifts of blood to the needed person.
It was first initiated and established to be celebrated annually on 14th of June by "the World Health Organization, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies" in the year 2004. World Blood Donor Day was officially established by the WHO with its 192 Member States in the month of May in 2005 at the 58th World Health Assembly in order to motivate all the countries worldwide to thank the blood donors or their precious step, promote voluntary safe and unpaid blood donations to ensure the sufficient blood supplies.

World Blood Donor Day celebration brings a precious opportunity to all donors for celebrating it on national and global level as well as to commemorate the birthday anniversary of the Karl Landsteiner.
Sitangsu Kumar Bhaduri, Kolkata

Frontier
Vol. 48, No. 52, Jul 3 - 9, 2016