IAS-IPS acrimony

YOU have done well to highlight the IAS-IPS row in the editorial, “Chandigarh: more than a war of words” (May 15).

The malady is not confined to the police. Every profession has raised a voice against the overbearing and interfering role of the IAS sometime or the other during the last few decades. So it is also medicos vs-IAS, vets vs IAS, engineers vs IAS, academicians vs IAS and Defence Services vs IAS.

The genesis of the problem can be traced to the flouting of the convention that the Secretary will confine his job to laying down the policy and the targets and leave implementation to the head of department. The Secretary never had a direct link with the field officers who were answerable to Directors, or the DDOs in case of Class IV employees.

Then the politician came to learn that he could gather unto himself the powers to select and transfer and punish employees and officers whatever the latter’s category or status. The IAS officers, instead of trying to curb this tendency, saw an opportunity to further their own career and powers and the cases that were previously decided at the district or directorate level now regularly flow to the secretariat.

No one in India has cared to find out why a department that continues to be headed by a single Director has come to need an Under-Secretary, a Joint Secretary, an Additional Secretary and a Commissioner or even an FC: four IAS officers to do the job that a single Secretary did 50 years back. And he usually had more than one department to look after.

The concentration of power suits the politician because it gets him votes, and it suits the IAS officer because it gets him status and perks. Monetary gratification has lately complicated the issue and decentralisation, which is the only solution, will elude us unless we are lucky enough to get a few dedicated, patriotic politicians with adequate administrative experience in the right places of authority. A Bedi, a Jethmalani and a George Fernandes do raise a voice now and then. It does not take us very far.

L.R. SHARMA
Solan

Kiran: Not really gone

Kiran Bedi will always be remembered
For the services she has rendered
The IG has been transferred
The fighter must not have surrendered!
Kiran Bedi was a ray of hope
For the residents of the City Beautiful..
But it seems; there is no scope
For the officers who are really dutiful.

YASMIN DUTTA
Panchkula

Ways of Punjab Tourism

The Punjab Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) has many hotel/motels in the state, and to attract customers it has enrolled many people as members by accepting interest-free deposits of Rs 2,500 against which it allows a 20 per cent discount on food and a 40 per cent discount on room rent subject to Rs 2,500 per annum; thereafter members are entitled to a 10 per cent discount only.

The PTDC has issued photo-identity cards to such members to avail themselves of the rebate, which is recorded on a separate card, sent to the members every year before April 1.

This year till date it has adopted a cunning practice by withholding the despatch of cards, in the absence of which the hotels/motels are not allowing a full rebate but only a 10 per cent rebate, causing a loss to the members and a fraudulent gain to the PTDC.

I suffered the loss when I visited Sukh Chain Hotel, Jalandhar, and paid Rs 410 against CM No 3171/145 on May 11.

MAN MOHAN SINGH
Ludhiana

Come forward

I was reading an advertisement of the Municipal Corporation, Patiala, in The Tribune of May 16 wherein the Municipal Corporation, Patiala, has been directed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court to close down 227 such business establishments in the walled city of Patiala which are detrimental to human health. The orders have been issued by the High Court in the civil writ petition No. 19521/1996 in the case of Janak Raj vs State of Punjab.

The decision of the High Court is laudable. But I feel that more and more Janak Rajs should rise to the occasion and more public interest litigations should be filed because such illegal activities are going on throughout the country which are playing havoc with precious human lives.

SUSHIL KUMAR
Lehra Mohabbat

Backdoor entry

This is with reference to the news item “Backdoor entry in colleges” (May 7).

If a probe is ordered into similar migrations to various medical colleges covering last many years, a mushroom of corruption may be detected.

Admission is secured by paying capitation fee to colleges outside Punjab and then migration is obtained by using all possible means.

AJIT SINGH
Jalandhar

Learning from the past

This refers to the editorial “China’s real fears” (May 11). Earlier also there have been suggestions that Russia, China and India must forge an alliance of sorts against the stance of NATO countries who are posing as the champions of ethnic minorities and human rights to safeguard against any impending upheavals.

It is a historical fact that ethnic minorities have been suffering all over the world. They had been even assimilated by force or dubious methods by the powers that be in erstwhile Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule. There was an effort to end the multiplicity of languages and the multicultural texture. Similarly, the bogey of the Germans as a superior race under Adolf Hitler not only uprooted ethnic minorities but also caused the extermination of Jews on a vast scale.

But the linguistic and cultural bonds do not perish, and assert themselves as can be seen in the disintegration of Soviet Russia and the Balkan states, which are now struggling to re-establish their identity. We must learn a lesson or two from these eruptions as our own country has a multi-linguistic, multi-cultural and multi-religious character.

LIEUT -COL CHANAN SINGH DHILLON (Retd)
Ludhiana