Wrong message

This refers to the news report “Now, L&T Chairman advocates 90-hour work week” (January 10). Even if SN Subrahmanyan wants his employees to work 90 hours every week, he need not have given the weird reason to justify it. People don’t just stare at their spouses in their free time.

Subrahmanyan should have recalled how his boss AN Naik had repented , “I gave zero time to my wife, no time to my children. I am now trying to make it up and say that in the final phase of life let me whitewash my sin…”

Putting himself as the role model ignores the grave difference between how the company’s less-paid employees spend their time with their families and how the well-paid do.

YG Chouksey

Pune

Tax relief

The points suggested in the Editorial ‘Too taxing’ (January 9) are quite welcome. It has rightly focused on the need to give required tax relief to the taxpayers of the middle class who form a major chunk in the tax base. Raising the standard deduction or altering the tax rate would help the taxpayers to have enough disposable income to boost consumer spending.

Centre must be liberal towards the pensioners category. It can either introduce a new tax slab for pensioners or slash the TDS rate drastically or raise the exemption limit.

RV Baskaran

Chennai

Scaling up farming

The article ‘Empower small farmers’ (January 10) made for a good read. Marginal and small farmers constitute a large percentage in India. They live in penury and are indebted too, thanks to low yields/marketable surplus of their lands, their over-dependence on money lenders for loans (despite the availability of private and public sector banks) and lack of irrigation facilities.

S Ramakrishnasayee

Chennai