54. AN OPEN LETTER

This open letter is meant to one Mr Eric in response to his article in Wall Street Journal.

SEE MY TAMIL POST ON THIS HERE.

Mr. Eric,
Happened to come to your article in WSJ - - from the columns of P.Sainath, the winner of the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts in The Hindu dated 18.01.’08 -

It made an interesting read!

Just wanted to make few comments:

- From your title I understand that you say that the Brahmins WERE at least once the fortunate lot and that has reversed now.

- From the data in the table given by you and from the corrigendum to your article those ‘misfortunate’ lot are the RICHEST lot (65% and 50% respectively)

- I understand that for your case study you have taken a poor teacher from the RICHEST group.

- I request that you may consider to compare this poor teacher with another poor from the POOREST group, some one from the 91%. I am sure it would give some very interesting points for your future columns.

- Since your name sounds different I take it that you are from a different culture. If so, I would like to request you to first understand the ground realities before you make your valuable comments in a journal of any kind.

- There is a saying in my mother tongue, Tamil: “Some cry for sugar for their daily milk; while there are many who cry for salt for their sporadic gruel”. Your article was about an unfortunate from the former. Why not try to know somebody from the latter. Try. No harm.