III

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit raised the electricity tariff by over 24% in a single go. She was vehement in remarking that this should have had happened at the onset of the summer season.

An average middle class India earns about Rs 10-15,000 a month and pays more than 20% of it as electricity bill alone. How would the common man pay for his children’s fee, rent and above all how would he meet the kitchen expenses.?

SAROJ SHARMA, Amritsar

IV

Weather cannot be controlled or regulated by any government or individual, but steps can be taken to neutralise its effects on the people. Whatever be the weather, it is routine to read news reports related to vagaries of Nature.

Mumbai is waterlogged every rainy season. Even a drizzle leaves the roads broken and muddy especially in rural areas.

Unscheduled and long power cuts in summer do not allow people to beat the heat. In winter, we do not have adequate measures to save the poor from the freezing cold. There is no proper drainage system in the streets to make the rainy season less troublesome. It is upon the government to provide adequate safeguards to the masses and ensure that the benefits reach everybody in need.

KSHITIJ GUPTA, Narwana (Haryana)

Professionalism

One fine morning, the central government wakes up to the need of a performance-oriented bureaucracy (editorial “Retire non-performers”, July 3). The idea is to streamline the bureaucracy and make it perform by throwing the non-performers out. The idea may sound very good but is not that easy keeping in mind the background of the working of the bureaucracy in the last six decades of post-independent India.

The politico-bureaucratic nexus is well known in every part of the country. The handful of the so-called smart civil servants specialise in bending rules to meet the political and economic interests of their political bosses. It is a pity that today one can see two groups of civil servants in every state — the first group that aligns with the ruling class is assigned coveted posts and the remaining civil servants are sidelined and not included in implementation process of the government.

No one in the Indian political system ever bothered to cultivated Indian bureaucrats as professional, honest and efficient civil servants committed to the constitutional and parliamentary laws of the land and faithful to the Indian masses. There is need of serious administrative reforms at the Centre and the states. The way business administration has created professional teams of executives committed to business houses, there is a need of committed civil servants for public administration.

JAGDISH MITTER GANDHI, Gurgaon

Curtailing Freedom

It is quite intriguing that the Shah Commission report is missing from the South Block (Kuldeep Nayar’s article “Where are Shah Commission files?” July 4). This report must be traced in national interest as it is a dossier of common man’s resistance against the contemporary authoritarian regime. Nayar’s article symbolises cultural conscience, ethical commitment and boldness of convictions.

The ruling elite tried to muffle and crush the dissent of political opinion with a heavy hand declaring Emergency in the country in June, 1975 and the Shah Commission report was a true testimony to the happenings.

Dr RAJ BAHADUR  YADAV, Fatehabad (Haryana)

Foodgrain storage

One simple but effective suggestion regarding foodgrain storage space is the use of space under long road bridges. For example Zirakpur bridge near Chandigarh has more than 150 empty spans which are 30 feet tall, 50 feet long and about 30 feet wide. The space if covered properly can be used to store more than 30,000 quintals of wheat. Space under the bridges can be leased to the contractors who will manage the storage for the government.