Civil servants

This refers to ‘Creating leaders out of civil servants’ (June 20). The concept of civil servants has been in vogue in India as a legacy from the colonial rule.

In reality they have amply demonstrated that they are seldom ‘civil servants’ but ‘civilised masters’. They live in ivory towers more often currying favours (of course with a few exceptions) for their personal benefits, many a time conveniently nodding and dancing to the tunes of politicians.

As otherwise how do you explain dozens of civil servants being shown the door quite recently in the capital?

The author’s desire that all civil servants should be the epitome of virtues like honesty, integrity, positive attitude and the like itself is highly utopian. The three As — attitude, aptitude and altitude — emerge in them over a period of time, although all of them join the services with noble thoughts and lofty ideals. The performance appraisal system of all these officers should be perfected sans bias and subjectivity and preferably entrusted to an independent external body.

Chennai

For encouraging women to take up jobs and income-generating activities, it would be worthwhile to consider the following. Ensuring maximum participation in industrial training institutes would take care of young women getting equipped with professional training certification.

Financial literacy is a key factor to ensure that these women become economically viable. Banking correspondent registry certification course for young village women to become business correspondents for neighbouring banks is another way to ensure they get into the mainstream of society and earn. There are new ideas and new opportunities which are surfacing in metros and urban cities. PG accommodation is one.

Young women residing in cities could take up the task of managing PG accommodations for women migrating to big cities on account of job requirements. Evidently, food supply, laundry, cleaning and buying grocery for those living in the PG accommodation would be a major revenue earners for them.

Vadodara

We are aware that for the BJP the proposition, ‘one nation, one religion, one culture, one language’ is irresistible.

Now to enlarge or add to it, the party has come out with a new (thankfully, relatively less consequential in terms of exclusivity) proposal of ‘one nation, one poll’. The grandiose proposal is not only infeasible, but also undesirable.

It is not commensurate with the ‘parliamentary democracy’ we have chosen for ourselves, the country’s political diversity and its ‘federal structure’. If elections are reduced to a ‘one-time event’, it will shrink the canvass of democracy.

The expenditure, deployment of security personnel, deputation of government employees for ‘election duty’ and the so-called policy paralysis on account of the enforcement of Model Code of Conduct are often cited to buttress the argument in favour of simultaneous polls. But we must admit that they are no more than a small price to pay to keep our democracy at its most vibrant.

Maruthancode, TN

In the story ‘Chennai’s manufacturing hub manages water crisis better as rainwater harvesting, recycling pay off’ (June 20), the following quote: “As one of the largest automotive manufacturing units in the Chennai-Oragadam industrial corridor, the company has taken significant steps to optimise water usage. It has three rainwater harvesting ponds within the factory premises. These ponds have 1.9 lakh kilolitres of storage capacity but presently the water levels have depleted considerably. The focus, however, remains to continuously look at processes and efficiencies in reducing water used per unit of vehicle made at the plant” was erroneously attributed to a Daimler India Commercial Vehicles spokesperson. The response was, in fact, from the spokesperson for Renault Nissan Alliance India Private Ltd. The error is regretted.

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