Apropos of the editorial “In the wrong spirit” (THT, November 29, Page 6), we cannot but applaud the government decision to bar drunks from travelling in public buses and ban liquor gift. Some others like banning liquor advertisements and liquor conglomerates sponsoring programmes are dicey unless the government compensates the media for loss of ad revenues through other avenues. And, some like having only two liquor stores in each ward could be a deliberate ruse to handover the lucrative business to the political businessmen who seem to have developed a strong penchant for making unlimited money. Thus, there was no need for an airtight clampdown on liquor consumption, sale and marketing just as there was no need to ban helicopter rescues or tipper movement. The total ban never helps, be it free speech, movements or whatever as we had seen during the last days of monarchy. We also know from the stories of the same period that total ban does not keep the public disciplined. There are legal instruments to control misuse of facilities. The success of MaPaSe has shown that drunk people could easily be stopped from boarding buses, taxis, planes and helicopters or from conducting violently and disorderly. Make public transportation for heavy fines for carrying drunk people. This should do. To sum up, as the people who run the government know, there are other ways and means to control excesses without infringing upon basic human rights of citizens. But, by raising all sorts of issues, the present government seems to be resorting to deriving sadistic pleasure from the public’s dilemmas and inconveniences. If not corrected, this will boomerang on the government face sooner rather than later.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Acronyms

Modern scientific literature and the media in both electronic and hard copy versions are using too many acronyms for any ordinary individual to often understand and grab the context. It is being increasingly noticed in all forms of education and research. Quite often, only experts from the related field can understand the complete meaning and significance of such acronyms being randomly used in all forms of communications, both technical and non-technical. Furthermore, exact same acronym often mean completely different things in different fields adding to this grand confusion. In this modern era of social media use such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp as well as smart phone based texting, messaging and imaging; many common words are getting formatted into convenient abbreviations that often make no sense to people who do not use them quite frequently. It is therefore important to develop a comprehensive dictionary for such acronym to be completely described and listed alphabetically. May be in the not so distant future such lexicographic initiative will be adorning our book shelves as a ready reckoner.

Saikat Kumar Basu, Canada