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Overdue recognition Congratulations for publishing the comprehensive EW India Higher Education Rankings 2024-25 (EW April) to help school-leavers make informed college choices. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my low-profile alma mater Govt. Holkar (Model Autonomous) Science College, Indore has been ranked among the Top 10 government autonomous colleges for the past three years by EW. Many thanks to Dr. Silawat and his team for doing a commendable job and integrating entrepreneurship, employability and skill development in the curriculum. Thanks for the overdue recognition. Prakash Gupta on email Inverted telescope Your Special Report feature India’s Colonisation of Bharat (EW March) addresses a very important subject that is sidelined politically and obscured by captive media. But, it is a view from the top through an inverted telescope. The urban-rural divide requires a view from ground zero. Somewhat like what Prof. M.S. Swaminathan and team did in their National Commission on Farmers (NCF) report in 2006. Having experienced life as an agriculturist and as an industrialist, your feature provides a realistic view of the problems and ailments of rural India. But your support of laws that the Central Government tried to push through are misguided and ill-informed. In the Union Budget 2024-25, the allocations of the ministries of rural development (Rs.1.60 lakh crore), agriculture and farmers welfare (Rs.1.23 lakh crore) add up to Rs.2.83 lakh crore out of the total budget expenditure of Rs.45 lakh crore — 6.2 percent for 69 percent of the population. Other expenditure through other ministries’ allocation compounded generously, would add up to about 15 percent of total budgetary expenditure. Allowing for debt repayment (22 percent) and defence (5.6 percent), the remaining 57 percent of the budget expenditure is for urban India. For 75 years agriculture has been fettered by adverse economic and administrative laws. There isn’t a single non-politician, non-industrial farmer in the league table of 50 most wealthy Indians. The three new laws propose to liberalise agriculture. That is to say that fattened urban billionaires and millionaires could walk into agriculture and compete with the long-chained farmers hobbled by pathethic infrastructure. Anil Thakore Bengaluru Rural development expenditure is substantially of state governments — Editor Inequality within inequality Your special report feature titled: India’s Colonisation of Bharat — Liberating Rural India (EW March) is a significant, serious and empathetic warning to the powers that the great divide between urban and rural India — a striking example of inequality within inequality – should be urgently addressed. Those who grow India’s food remain half-fed and hungry, especially agricultural labour who constitute the majority in rural India. Rural labourers who migrate to urban India to construct houses, bungalows, apartment complexes leave their families in their villages to live and suffer in thatched huts. Children of farmers who supply milk and milk products to urban India are malnourished, anaemic and underweight. Maternal and neonatal mortality has not declined significantly even after 77 years of independence. All fundamental rights including health, housing and education for rural citizens have remained dry, drab…