I enjoyed the letter published in Readers Column on February 26 about the coalition-cartel and mafias. No doubt they have ruined us and are still doing so. Nonetheless, there was one cartel missing from mention in that letter and that is the bureaucracy, which from Patwari to grade 22 civil servant are all just as ruthless a master of our people as the other mafias. This post colonial inheritance, the left-over crumbs of British Raj, are still bitten by the 'ruler syndrome even after sixty years of independence. They are like Pharaohs that lord over the ordinary serfs from their place innumerable flights of steps above. You find them in any congregation or function, they would be sat in grades in their own segregated company, making even small talk between only themselves. If you over-hear them, they would mostly be talking either postings, transfers or millions of dollar business deals. They might also briefly mention the industries of their near ones, or the education of their children abroad or a prized estate or property they have recently acquired. But they being the civil lords cartel of the billionaires club, they are always discreet and circumspect about show of their wealth, except of course, at the 'wedding shows of their children. If you know their (more often than not) modest family background, you would wonder wherefrom did they acquire the assets worth billions which definitely cannot not be amassed if one makes do with a bureaucrats salary. In service, they enjoy by right residences of six-eight canals, platoons of servants, a fleet of cars at their and familys disposal. They also get plots worth crores yet always declare themselves paupers in the income declarations. Their clannish solidarity is a legend; if any of their colleagues is nabbed in corruption, he is almost always exonerated in every internal inquiry. Next to the actual rulers of the country, they are the most powerful people around, the high and mighty that ordinary people learn to fear and, therefore, respect. -SONY. M. CHENABI, Gujrat, March 4.