THIS is apropos of Tasneem Noorani’s article ‘Bureaucrats or courtiers?’ (June 2). It reminds me of a few lines of an article in this paper by senior bureaucrat Tasneem Ahmed more than a decade ago. He narrated the reasons of the fall of bureaucracy. He wrote that the “fall of bureaucracy started when secretary-level officers started opening doors of cars of politicians.”

I agree with Mr Noorani that we should strive to have bureaucrats as servants of states and not servants of political parties.

In my opinion, the enormous challenges which the country is facing now and are under discussion at various forums could only be resolved by placing par excellent governance system at all levels which could only be done by saying goodbye to favouritism, ending the role of politicians in transfers and postings, relocation of bureaucrats should be purely on merit through a system of bureaucracy and, above all, banning bureaucrats from visiting houses of politicians.

M. IQBAL M.
Hyderabad