The news that CDA is planning to allocate two more plots in Islamabad to each of the recently promoted senior bureaucrats in Grade-22 is very disturbing. What have these paid civil servants done to qualify for this great largesse from a nation that cannot feed its teeming millions nor provide them education, healthcare, or even clean drinking water. This tradition of seeking plots and state agricultural land by the civil and khaki bureaucracy must stop because it is a bad legacy of the colonial Raj. The British doled out these favors to win loyalty of the natives and it helped prolong their rule. For the past 60 years, though, this country's resources have been over-stretched to pay for the perk and pelf of its paid civil and military servants and the minority of its elite while the interests of the vast majority of its poor citizens has been ignored altogether. Maintaining the elitist culture of great Golfing resorts and Polo clubs for our bureaucracy has been a drain on our meager resources. So is the practice of allocating state land for private hospitals which are beyond the reach of even the lower middle class, what to speak of poor. Most of our problems stem from the deep-rooted corruption and red tape that is the hallmark of our bureaucracy. It is because of the incompetence and lack of integrity of the senior bureaucracy that the nation has suffered so much. They lack the vision and sense of honor to serve the people. It is time the state of Pakistan metamorphoses into a democratic welfare state envisioned by its founding fathers where the civil servants were supposed to serve people instead of behaving like arrogant masters lording over their property and stealing from their kitty of assets. -MALIK TARIQ, Lahore, October 21.