The colonial British Raj flourished in India through the connivance of a bureaucracy carved out of the natives. The loyalty of these starched men was bought through allotment of lands, titles and estates. The Raj bureaucrats were trained to serve the Empire and were housed in separate colonies and cantonments away from the general populace. The GORs are the remnants of the colonial Raj. Not a single separate colony of bureaucrats exists in democratic UK, nor in any other democratic country of the West where state employees are considered servants of the people. However the interests of the Raj in India were served by creating brown babus of mediocre intellect who were by design alienated from the natives because they were supposed to serve their masters instead of the masses. Today, at a time when the country suffers from a state of total lawlessness, walls are being erected around the GORs, reminding us of the Green Zone in Baghdad which were sealed off from the locals to offer 'safe' residence to NATO forces in Iraq. Pakistan suffers today because remnants of the Raj have conspired since 1947 to bleed this state of its resources so that they continue to get the perks and privileges their white-hatted predecessors enjoyed in the days of the British Empire. -MALIK T. ALI, Lahore, via e-mail, June 25.