Writer's ambition recognizes / acknowledges no ceilings

There is a whole lot of breast-beating on corruption and I ain't immune to indulging in the same. However, I would like to go fishing in an expanded catchment area, beyond the shores of the group called 'politicians', and indeed focus on those who consider themselves the founding members of the club of R K Laxman's "Common man".  Given below is a letter I had sent to the paper The Hindu, and whether you are a "Common man" or not, there is a probability that at least some of you will enjoy it. Dare yourself, take the risk and plunge in!

Dear Sir/ma'am:

On an impulse, I went to the Open Page tab on your Net edition at www.thehindu.com today, August 21, 2011. I assumed that each of the links given therein had appeared in your paper edition. On a mere fancy I checked out the number of words in a random sample from the links. After all, your paper edition of Open Page carries this caveat, "The length of the article should not exceed 700 words," and I wanted to see whether you hold yourself to your words. Alas, you do not!

686, 652, 1239, 790, 1388, 449, 710, 1004, 857, 723

The numbers given above are the length in words of ten articles out of the available 40 plus. That is, as many as 70% of the submissions violate one of the basic, indeed easily verifiable stipulations of the requirements. That is the contempt that writers have for this space and its publisher! Then, why do you at all carry this stipulation? Are you a masochist, to willingly suffer this insult and ignominy?

Ambition to be a "published" writer does this to people. And, there are also people who had ostensibly held high positions whose contempt breaches the ceiling, like 1,388 words when the limit is 700, nearly twice! Scale it up further to see why Lokpal or not, corruption ain't going to end.

Thanks and regards,

Raghuram Ekambaram

Raghuram Ekambaram