Country needs brilliant bureaucrats

This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "'Where have all the good bureaucrats gone'" carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Shabir Ahmed, has argued that "The widely held opinion that the Army and the Judiciary are the only two 'working' institutions in the country. No genius is required to guess why they work and the civil services don't". That the standards of civil service are falling for several decades is a fact.
It is no secret that a large number of candidates who apply for the competitive civil services examination lack proper understanding of country's issues. Our country needs brilliant people to handle its complex administrative problems and to implement its developmental schemes. Our governments are required to ensure that only highly talented and qualified people are recruited with a view to averting the collapse of civil services in Pakistan.