WHEN determining the governability or otherwise of Pakistan, one has to see how effective the government is in its day-to-day operations as well as in long-term planning. One invariably comes to the conclusion that either the state fails to deliver or buckles under pressure when its writ is challenged by pressure groups.

We have recently witnessed this phenomenon in the case of madressah registration and the de-weaponisation campaigns, which were launched with great fanfare but abandoned when resisted by powerful groups. To elaborate further we can take up two areas — our inability to perform in the social sectors and our poor disaster management capacity — and see how we fare in each.

Both are important because they touch the lives of millions of people. It is the state’s basic responsibility to provide services like health, primary education, roads, water supply and sanitation to its people, especially to the low-income groups, and to come to their rescue in case of a natural or man-made disaster.

Let us take the social sector first, and see why we continue to be ranked so low — 134th — on the UN Human Development Index. More than poor resource allocation to this sector, it is the lack of vision and poor governance which keep the majority of our population illiterate, malnourished and without any medical cover, even after 60 years of independence.

We have spent billions of rupees on the construction of school buildings, basic health units, rural health centres, community halls, rural water supply schemes, etc, but our social indicators remain as poor as before. What has gone wrong?

It is not difficult to see that because of poor governance and lack of accountability, Pakistan has become a graveyard of incomplete or abandoned schemes. Even if the schemes are completed, most of them remain unutilised or under-utilised for a number of years, while the poor people suffer.

For example, there are around 20,000 ‘ghost’ schools in the country, but the government, with all its power and resources, can neither make them operational, nor dismiss the teachers who draw salaries without doing any work. The same can be said of health facilities.

Even in Karachi, where all the high-ups are located, there are maternity homes and BHUs in low-income areas, which remain non-functional, for one reason or the other. This newspaper keeps on publishing such reports almost every week, but without any visible results.

Perceptive observers point out that the basic reason for this poor performance is our deeply flawed planning and development paradigm. Its focus is on brick and mortar, not on sustainable development or sociological change. It excludes the people from decision-making and works to the benefit of consultants, contractors and engineers, who have developed a powerful nexus that siphons 80 per cent of development funds. Hardly 20 per cent reach the target groups.

Disaster management is another area where the question of governability is tested and people can see first-hand the effectiveness of the government in dealing with emergent situations. In every country, citizens expect that the local, provincial and federal governments would be fully equipped for rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations as soon as any disaster strikes. Here, too, we see that the government (at all three levels) is not geared to meet the challenge — big or small.

First, take the example of the earthquake which hit the northern part of Pakistan in October 2005. Without going into the details, one can recall that before the government could even gauge the enormity of the situation or think of any rescue operations, foreign teams with modern gadgetry and equipment started pouring into Pakistan. They saved precious lives not only in Islamabad but also in remote parts of Azad Kashmir and the NWFP.

At this crucial juncture, we had no proper agency to coordinate relief and rescue operations, nor any equipment to remove the rubble nor laser cutters to rescue people. Heavy machinery had to be borrowed from private contractors. A disaster management cell was created after several weeks. This was later converted into a disaster management authority. But even now this ‘authority’ is without any trained staff or the required equipment.

Take another example. Recently, vast areas of Sindh and Balochistan were devastated by floods. Providing relief to the affected people and rescuing them from dangerous areas is a routine exercise which was previously carried out by the revenue and irrigation staff. But this year, the poor people were left to the mercy of the local waderas and district nazims who failed miserably in providing succour to those in need of immediate aid, leaving them helpless for weeks on end.

The collapse of the Shershah bridge also needs to be studied from a governance point of view. That a bridge which was inaugurated by the president of Pakistan a little over a month ago collapsed is no doubt a major disaster and embarrassment for the government, but the bigger question is how the disaster management agency dealt with this event.

The bridge collapsed around noon but for hours no rescue operations could be initiated by any government agency. Ordinary people who had gathered at the site tried to save precious lives with the help of shovels. Even when the government ministers and functionaries reached the scene, they had no clue as to how to go about rescuing the unfortunate people who were trapped under the rubble.

The City District Government, which should be the prime agency responsible for rescue operations in Karachi, does not even have enough fire tenders and snorkels to rescue people beyond the eighth floor of a high-rise building, as we witnessed in the case of the PNSC building twice in six months. The availability or lack of modern gadgetry can be left to the imagination. The same is true of the government of Sindh.

Pakistan is a land of strange paradoxes. We are a nuclear power with the fifth largest standing army in the world. We have state of the art institutions and quite a few centres of excellence, but are not able to remove filth from our streets or devise a proper drainage system for the most posh areas of Karachi. We can conclude by saying that ungovernability in Pakistan is increasing at all levels.

The examples given in this article — and a previous one on this subject published by this paper earlier this month — show the mere symptoms of the disease that our society is suffering from. It is the absence of appropriate institutions of governance and lack of accountability which is responsible for this decay. Nothing will change unless we focus our attention on structural reforms and institutional development.

How can this be done? What role can different stakeholders play? This is a multi-million dollar question. Perhaps the National Commission on Government Reforms can come up with an answer.