Conclave 2014

I admire your yearly Conclave (“The Will to Win”, March 24), where celebrities from various walks of life gather to share their thoughts and experiences. We hear a lot about economic development, the need for infrastructure development, stamping out corruption, reforms in education, women’s empowerment and so on. On the other hand, we hardly hear anything about some very basic restructuring needs.

The need of the hour is ‘transformation’. Let me illustrate: Rooting out corruption is possible only if transparency is assured in all systems of governance, and there is stricter adherence to time-bound clearances of all matters before any authority.

Reform in education can bear fruit only if quotas are abolished and merit becomes the sole benchmark. Reservation in any form is detrimental to growth and advancement. Legal impartiality is possible only if there is one common law across the country in place of all personal laws. Article 370, for example, is a deterrent in substantiating our rightful claim on J&K as an integral part of India.

Why do political parties shy away from such transformations? Is it not because of their compulsion to preserve and protect vote banks? At the next Conclave, I wish you invite speakers who can influence people’s minds to demand such transformation.

GAUTAM KANTHARIA,

Ahmedabad The India Today Conclave is the only assembly where shoes are used for tapping, not for hurling, and mikes are used for speaking, not for stabbing.

RAJNEESH BATRA, New Delhi The gap between India—a growing economy that hosts the Conclave which attracts the best global talent for an exchange of ideas, and a country 60 per cent of whose population defecates in the open, is too huge and humiliating (“Sanitation Is Equal to Salvation”, March 24). It