White Lies

In Punjab's politically charged environment every job appointment creates its critics. This time it is provincial mandarins experiencing heart burns at seeing the newly created post of Chairman, Parks and Horticulture Authority go, not to a bureaucrat but horrors, a man actually working in the horticulture field. Apparently Ahsan Iqbal may have lost his job in the centre but his brother Mustapha Kamal has just gained this prized slot in Punjab. The baboos are calling this plain nepotism because as they put it, does the man have a master's degree in political science or economics or even history? Where, they say, is his life-time achievement of sitting in an office and managing file logistics? Brother Kamal has neither. Never mind if he is an entrepreneur in the horticulture business whose label "Plant Care" participated in the green revolution of the late eighties and early nineties securing him many a lucrative contracts of parks, banks and business offices. In the nineties he even got the job of keeping the PM and CM house and gardens green. There was perhaps some support from his late high profile mother but he did make his mark much earlier than brother Ahsan Iqbal. However bureaucracy still has a grouse. Where is the degree and seniority?

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