Dehradun, April 10 -- It is ridiculous to ask the police and the bureaucracy to be community and class blind in a time of crisis when in routine functioning they are selected and expected to function on exactly that basis. This is why sundry Chief Ministers' instructions to officials to act impartially in response to 'communal' riots are little more than farcical. The leopard cannot change his spots; certainly not overnight!
The entire purpose behind having a separate entity such as the bureaucracy, particularly in the Indian context, is for it to be ideologically neutral in every way. Trained to make the distinction between legitimate political directives and illegal ones, they are expected to serve the nation-state instead of the parties...