Tamil Nadu   

Sixth Pay Commission

While all the discussions on the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations have centred on how they will help to curb corruption, the article “A raw deal for men in uniform” (April 9) has focussed on a much more relevant and crucial subject. True, the IAS cadre works under a lot of pressure but to equate it with, and give it preference to, services that work under more rigorous conditions, including risk to life, is unwarranted and insulting to the other services.

The observation by a police officer that he didn’t join the government to get rich but he thinks his job merits respect sums up the sentiment. It is important for the government to implement the principle — more onerous the duty, higher the pay.

S. Sudhir Kumar,

Hyderabad

The article has rightly highlighted the undue advantage the IAS gets in the name of ‘an edge’ over the IPS. While the edge may not necessarily be an incentive for candidates to join the IAS, it will surely be a disincentive to the high-ranking candidates who join the IPS despite qualifying for the IAS.

Maneesha Verma,

Thiruvananthapuram It is our armed forces personnel who risk their lives to protect us and our national honour. They must be actually paid much more than the babus.

Members of the Pay Commission should have visited Siachen to see the conditions under which the army personnel work. It would have had a salutary effect on them and they would have recommended better pay scales for the men in uniform.

Satbir Singh Bedi,

New Delhi Among the all-India services, the IAS has always taken the cake leaving its sister services far behind. Since independence, the position of the armed forces has been continually eroded and it has come to a stage where they are treated without adequate recognition by the bureaucracy.

Those who sacrifice their lives for the nation deserve better than trailing behind the administrative service. The government should take note of their just demands.

Capt. O.B. Nair,

Kochi I agree that the Sixth CPC should have been more generous towards the security forces. At the same time, it is improper to question the career-parity accorded to the Indian Foreign Service with the IAS. Foreign service has its own rigours and is of immense importance to a country. Staying away from one’s parent country, adjusting to varied (sometimes cumbersome and tough) work environment, conducting difficult parleys, and making complex decisions are, by no means, easy.

Tarun Sharma,

Ghaziabad It is time the raw deal given to the security forces was corrected. Also, the myth about the IAS, a hangover effect of the British Raj, needs to be removed and importance given to those services which the country and time require.

Mrutyunjay Behera,

New Delhi The armed forces personnel, by virtue of being governed by the Armed Forces Act, have restricted rights and liberties. Also, their service conditions are hazardous and life-threatening. A reducing sliding-scale starting from 35 per cent of basic pay for troops to 15 per cent for brigadiers and above may be commensurate with the risks faced by them.

Celene Susan,

Dabolim

After six decades of invidious discrimination on religious grounds, the plight of Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians has been highlighted by the National Commission for Minorities (April 5), which has suggested that they be given reservation. Except a few, most of our leaders have turned a deaf ear to the cause of Dalit converts. Even eminent Christians failed to focus adequately on this injustice. The Gopalsingh Commission recommended amendment of the Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order of 1950 in 1983 itself. Former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran issued a government order extending the backward class status to all Christian converts from Hindu backward communities. Other States followed suit. When converts from Hindu backward class communities could be included in the BCs list, denying the SC status to Dalit converts is nothing but grave injustice.

I.D. Jawahar Raj,

Tirunelveli There are no Dalits among Muslims. Islam stands for brotherhood and compassion: it treats all its followers equally. It is one of the main reasons for the spread of Islam. When people embrace Islam, they are welcomed with open arms and integrated in Islamic society without discrimination.

Abu Saif,

Chennai

The Hindu’s bias in favour of the Chinese Government in its editorial on Tibet (March 26, 2008) is dismaying. The reasons behind the recent demonstrations by Tibetans are transparent. You speak of sustained growth, omitting the fact that Han Chinese control the economy, party and government. Impartial observers have documented the onslaught on natural resources, the repression of Buddhism, the enforced denunciations of the Dalai Lama. The subjugation of Tibet is most evident in re-settlement policy.

In 1952, Chairman Mao complained that there were “hardly any Han in Tibet.” By 1953, there were 100,000 Chinese in the province of Qinghai, the renamed eastern Tibetan province of Amdo. In 1985, there were 2.5 million Chinese and 750,000 Tibetans in Qinghai. By the 2000 census, only 20 per cent of Qinghai’s population was Tibetan.

This demographic engineering undermines the comparison you draw between Tibet and Kashmir. Right-wing groups in India have long demanded the re-settlement of the Kashmir Valley. However, Article 370 disallows non-state subjects from buying land; and it is to allay Kashmiri anxieties that New Delhi has not granted autonomy or separate statehood for Ladakh and Jammu.

Beijing’s abusive denunciations of the Dalai Lama and its stonewalling of his proposals make it difficult to accept their sincerity. A just solution “within the framework of one China” is precisely what the Dalai Lama has pursued.

Sonia Jabbar, Ramachandra Guha, Mukul Kesavan, Madhu Sarin, Jyotirmaya Sharma, Dilip Simeon, Tenzin Sonam, & Shashi Tharoor

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