Letters to The Editor — November 28, 2025

Assam Bill

At a time when Assam is burdened by high unemployment, chronic underinvestment and an administrative culture still hobbled by corruption, the government’s decision to prioritise a harsh anti-polygamy law sits oddly with the State’s real needs (Front page, November 26). Polygamy, by all credible accounts, is a statistically marginal practice. To elevate it into a legislative centrepiece is to mistake symbolic combat for governance.

Its significance lies instead in its political grammar. The move extends a familiar pattern of gestures calibrated to reassure the State’s most vocal right-wing constituencies: from aggressive eviction drives to the closure of madrasas and recurring alarms about demographic ‘imbalance’. These interventions share a common logic — they foreground cultural vigilance over developmental ambition and recast governance as a form of ideological custodianship. The deeper loss is one of administrative focus. By devoting scarce policy attention to identity-laden legislation, the government risks entrenching the very development stagnation it claims to remedy. Assam needs transparent institutions, job-creating investment and sustained planning far more urgently than another round of symbolic interventions dressed up as reform.

M. Jameel Ahmed,

Mysuru

Dismissal of officer

The very system of religious activity/practice in the armed forces needs a relook. The military establishment cannot take cover by stating that all personnel are to follow all religions/practices. Religion/spirituality should be one’s personal choice/right and no one can compel any one on this in our country. The Ministry of Defence needs to initiate a rehaul of this practice.

Prince Gnanathilagam,

Coimbatore