IN February 1988, The Day After readers in the Readers Report column had raised three important issues. The three letters from readers-----Prem Chand, G.Ram and Rajinder Singh Attri-----were titled "Bane of Seniority". "Let Youth Take Over" and "Revival of Feudalism in Gwalior". Intriguingly enough, the issues are still relevant and alive today, especially in the context of the winds of political and public madness which has already begun because of the polluting poll season.

The reader in his "Bane of Seniority" had this to say: "Our youthful PM (reference was to Rajiv Gandhi)", is always urging us to move ahead to meet new challenges with creative ideas. One reason why we lag behind is too much weightage given to age and seniority in public service and polity. Over 97 per cent posts under the Central Government are non-selection posts, that are filled by seniority. In this fast changing world of fierce competition, seniority has no virtue. Rather it is more often a drag. Senior people begin suffering from generation gap and fail to remain in tune with the changing rules, regulations and developmental challenges. Therefore, secretariat posts at every level up to Under Secretary, should be filled after testing the worth of employees through impartial departmental tests so that the posts go to the most deserving persons, who, irrespective of age and seniority, are up to the jobs they are required to handle. This will surely bring about an all-round qualitative improvement and make for efficiency in public service. Our gods and goddesses are always young. So is our Army. Why don't we keep our public service too in fine fettle?"

Today we see that the government employees are a government within the government. The finance ministers have to offer them sops and concessions because they are the vote banks. Why cannot we have a bureaucracy working on contract? That was the crux of the debate, which follows in the subsequent issues of The Day After. Today instead of getting rid of overstaffing and over-expansion and over-expensiveness of the permanent public servants the government seems to be suffering from the obsession of getting rid of some of the most efficient and profitable units of the public sector itself. Why cannot the great achievers of the new style of governance get rid of the bureaucratic deadwood which earns salaries to rather block than aid development and good governance? We have been raising this issue for quite some years and I would like to revive the debate once again.

The recent elections in some of the Indian states clearly indicated that wherever there were efforts to superimpose the old guard, their families, friends and favourite clansmen, the result was disastrous. The parties that were careful enough to rejuvenate themselves and bring the younger leadership to the forefront gained rich electoral dividend. And now if there is full blast campaign about the inadvisability of inducing Priyanka and Rahul as fresh blood, the Opposition parties seem to take hysteric notice of Congress committing a lethal mistake. But at the same time some of them tried to induce at least a part of the Gandhi-Nehru family, Maneka and her son into the BJP ranks. At least they do recognise the importance of the "dynasties" compared with the new "dynasties" which various other political parties are known to have spouted and are continuing to spout and sponsor, I would leave this debate at the old proverb asking do the pot have the fright to call the kettle black?

Our reader of 1988 had also expressed in his report entitled "Let Youth Take Over", "The question you have posed in the December 1987 issue is whether the Nation is honestly using its youth power? The blunt and bitter truth is that the elders have exploited the youth power for evil and selfish motives. We have misled them to believe that in real, practical life money and muscle power prevail over merit. Having gradually eroded all the valued and virtues of a decent public life, we constantly try to feed the youth with lofty sermons."

In that letter, reader G.Ram had underlined, "When we were young, we had the shining example of scores of great social and political leaders who had sacrificed all they possessed to see us free from political slavery and social evils. As the generation passed away and those born in an Independent India started entering the threshold of youth, we made them watch all that is worst in life. By our conduct and style of life we made them learn that everyone is for himself or herself and God is for all, including the Nation and the Society. When the youth began to emulate the elders, they became panicky. Elders began to enter the electoral arena with no holds barred. When the youth emulated them in the elections, they received shower of sermons."

The crunch of our readers's report was, "The elder leaders of today have taught the youngsters to be opportunists and selfish. Non-political leaders have taught them to be silent and disinterested till one's own interests appear threatened. We now have a large army of frustrated and disillusioned, unemployed youth. Rich are becoming richer. Hardly 10 per cent of people are thriving, mostly on ill-gotten money."

Ram had suggested, "Let the youth power come forward and take over, don't worry about inexperience. Let them even make mistakes and learn things in their own way. They have a long way to go." In today's context, I would only add that the President and Prime Minister of India are believed to accept the statistics that 54 per cent of the billion-plus population of our country today is youth. If they get rid of the old fogies and their personal vendettas and decide today a National Youth party, to rebuild an new India, can anyone stand up to them. The degenerate old fogies would be running for cover. Even that with great difficulty because most of them hardly have the legs and knees to even run properly.

The third readers’ report in that February issue of The Day After in 1988, I want to point out how feudalism has seized to be a power of grandeur and glamour compared with the style and splash of the new money-kings of India Inc. That report entitled "Revival of Feudalism in Gwalior" by Rajinder Singh Aattri, who felt that" It is quite surprising that many people have called the feudal Gwalior wedding a personal affair between two families. How can it be called a personal affair when a Union Minister and a former Union Minister were the protagonists in the whole royal drama which, it cannot be denied, will have its repercussions on the Indian society." He had clinched his report with the words, "Any way, in the Gwalior wedding our rulers have shown us a flash of future India, which will not be different from the feudal medieval India".

In that issue we had carried our detailed report of the success story of the Nyveli Lignite Corporation. But in this era of disinvestment we ardenlty hope that this too does not go to hogs and is sold out. We had also carried out a detailed story about the ONGC's contribution to economy. The Day After had also focused on the pioneering work by HUDCO, which set off a new housing revolution in the country, though still incomplete. We reported the death of a legend, Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, better known to the Pakhtoons as Bacha Khan or Badshah Khan. We had carried an in-depth investigatory story about the war of succession between the great MGR's women successors, Janaki Ramchandaran and Jayalalithaa.

Our investigatory story "what will the Budget Bring" had underlined "Taxes, for example, have lost all their justification and rationale." What do you say today?