Letter from Lahore: Lahore's Berlin Wall comes tumbling down

The bringing down of the brick walls set up to protect the bureaucrats living in the city's tree-lined Government Officer's Residence (GOR) area has been greeted with rejoicing by most commuters in the city.

The blockades, set up at two points in the colony, prevented traffic passing along the wide streets and past the colonial-style mansions of the province's top civil servants, acted to illustrate the divide between ordinary people and those entrusted with the task of serving them.

The degree of controversy caused by the walls, swiftly labelled 'The Babu's Berlin Wall' by people and the press, also indicated what little sympathy exists between civil servants and the public. The walls were set up at a portion of the Mall Road, the city's central artery, was closed off to traffic for the building of an underpass. As a result, other roads in the area have remained heavily congested for weeks, creating immense traffic snarls in the heart of the city.

Anticipating this situation, the brick walls in the GOR were set up two weeks ago on the orders of the Punjab Chief Secretary, preventing traffic from using the roads as a passage through to the Mall, and as such adding greatly to congestion on other roads but protecting bureaucrats from a heavy flow of traffic passing outside their gates.

Three days ago, angry commuters infuriated at being caught up for long periods on Jail Road tore down a portion of the wall, cheered on by onlookers. The blockade was re-erected within hours.

With the war between the people and public servants set to become still more bitter, the Punjab chief minister ordered that the blockades be dismantled immediately, given the degree of public inconvenience they were creating.

He is also said to have lashed out against the decision to set them up, and ordered traffic police to allow vehicles to also pass along the road outside his office, located on Club Road in the heart of the GOR, no matter how heavy the flow was.

On Friday, motorists, wagon drivers, rickshaw drivers and scooter-wallahs all poured into the GOR on their way to The Mall, cheering as they passed the heaps of brick piled up along the roadside, no longer stopping their path.

The situation in fact highlights the uneasy relationship between politicians, public servants and the people.

Mistrust is the key word on all sides, with bureaucrats, still seen as clinging on to a colonial past, and often blamed by people for growing inefficiency, corruption and the failure to resolve the problems of people. Certainly, it is the politicians and the people who this time round have emerged victorious in the latest battle with bureaucracy.

Indeed, even the timing of the underpass building, which coincides with the re-opening of schools after a three-month summer break, and as such greatly increased traffic on the roads, is being blamed on the ill-planning of civil servants.

But, while a battle may have been won, the wider war will certainly continue. For many, the latest brick-wall fiasco has shown that even 56 years after Independence, bureaucrats have not given up the elitism and the concern for themselves rather than the people, for which the British rulers of united India were best known. These attitudes also have a huge impact on the way public-sector departments are run, problems addressed and priorities fixed.

And until there is a change in this mind-set, there can be little hope of a change for the more positive in the perception of public servants and the manner in which they run the often-chaotic affairs of the country.