Dawn News 27-07-09


http://epaper.dawn.com/ArticleText.a...7_2009_006_003


APROPOS of Ayesha Siddiqua’s article, ‘No capacity to govern’ (July 24), I would like to add that the Civil Service personnel recruited through CSS examinations couldn’t be deemed as intellectual descendents of the former ICS or CSP officers who used to be no less equipped than the university dons.
The CSS examinees drawn from the humanities and professional subjects were largely fed on Dogar’s general knowledge and other “How to ….. stuff” kits, apart from a depleted curriculum of professional education programmes.

In T.S. Eliot’s language, they could be anything but wise and cosmopolitan. As we know, professional education courses didn’t have adequate inputs of humanities and social sciences except a bland repetitive initiation in Pakistan and Islamic Studies.

Perhaps we are aware of the mind-bogging number of monographs and books written by civil servants of colonial days. It proves that they knew the people they served. Post-independence bureaucrats don’t appear to be fond of reading and writing. Most of them are after career-advancing techniques which are generally oblivious of fair means. This lot is fond of a lifestyle disproportionate to their wages and they were not afraid of the fact that it was common knowledge of the public.

The present-day bureaucracy — at least a major chunk of it — should go through a refresher course in effective expression in English, besides Pakistani languages of the areas they are supposed to serve, so that their epistemologistic cognitive faculties were tested intermittently, if not annually.

The present Civil bureaucracy is, at best, accustomed to ghost-chasing.

DR MUHAMMAD ALI SIDDIQUI Karachi

It's very true to the very extent but all Civil Servants are not the same. there are a few who uphold integrity and maintain the historical decorum of CSP.