Planning demise of civil service

NOT content with the self-created decay in bureaucracy, is the present government working for the demise of the civil service? If it is, it is doing so with the subtlety and craft that only a successful corporate leader can possess.

The strategy is to destroy the civil service by undermining its morality, authority and commitment. The aim is to surround political bosses with a coterie of bureaucrats who are willing to pander to their egos and appetites.

The civil service is an unavoidable tool of governance because it is the delivery arm of the political will. Every state, therefore, tries to develop mechanisms that ensure the selection of the best available human resources, trained to serve governments to fulfil the state’s obligations effectively and with accountability.

Political rulers in Pakistan, however, believe that discretion is the right to do what you want to rather than what you should. For them liberty means licence. Politicians consider civil servants of integrity a threat to their freedom to manoeuvre and manipulate. Since 1947, civil servants have done little to endear themselves to the people. Whatever public good they delivered was more in the nature of a benefaction than regarded as a duty to the citizens. They were seen and derided as vestiges of the colonial era. Given the institutional momentum and tradition, a vast majority of them served their masters with dignity and integrity.

In 1973, the civil service reforms destroyed the independence and intellectual integrity of this cadre which was denied the support of an institutional mechanism. Perverse incentives were allowed to permeate the civil service.

Starting with Punjab in the early 1980s, the governance culture was totally transformed. The civil service lost its dedication and authority. The government servant (sarkari) turned into a courtier (darbari) of the holder of the fief. To the relief and joy of all political masters, such demeaning exploitation soon expanded, horizontally and vertically, across the country. Since then, we have seen the growth of a highly politicised bureaucracy (now to enjoy the fruits of this politicisation under the National Reconciliation Ordinance 2007) blind to the ideals of impartiality, transparency and accountability. Its motto is to serving the individual master rather than the state.

In October 1999, Gen Pervez Musharraf seized office and demonstrated a desire for reform. Arguably, the general believed in reform per se. But it is debatable if he had a clear and concrete vision of the reforms he wished to introduce. This depended on the source of intellectual counsel he received.

As chief executive, he initiated many measures directly or indirectly impacting on the civil services. While recruitment and promotion policies were systematically made more transparent, the basic structure and its neutral character were drastically undermined as a (designed) by-product of a poorly envisaged and badly managed change towards ‘devolution’.

Devolution had a negative impact on the civil service. It increased the cost of local government manifold. It denuded the police service of the umbrella of a neutral oversight and created a dangerous liaison between police and politicians for the purposes of coercion and exploitation.

If the aim was to deprive the state of the benefits of a civil service based on integrity and fully sensitised to the needs and aspirations of the people, the National Reconstruction Bureau achieved monumental success. It has ensured that the civil servants at the service delivery level are overly politicised, while policy planning at the federal level is left to the least sensitised and lesser intellects.

Then came 2004 when public sector management in Pakistan was seriously undermined in letter, spirit and practice. The autonomy and secure tenure of members of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) was reduced. FPSC membership does not reflect the best available talent. Today, not one member belongs to the service representing traditionally the best performers in the CSS exam. As for diversity, only three groups (foreign, police and office management) out of some 14 occupational groups comprise the membership of the FPSC, apart from luminaries representing the armed forces and the academia.

Between 2000 and 2002, transparency, competitiveness and inclusiveness had been introduced as the criteria for promotion in the civil service, particularly at the highest levels. Gradually, these reforms were consigned to oblivion. For no cogent reason, recommendations of the Central Selection Board are disregarded. Cronies are promoted to the highest positions, regardless of merit. As of now, apart from the accounts, the district management and secretariat groups, a serving member of no other group is working as a federal secretary.

Good governance is the prime minister’s favourite refrain. Buzzwords, slogans and borrowed aphorisms are routinely interspersed with official statements regarding the civil service. This is music to the ears of the donors but remains unimplemented in practice. Millions of dollars have been spent on programmes such as access to justice, public sector capacity building and the like.

Most civil service training institutions are headed by persons with no experience of the civil service. Newspaper reports inform us that a very large number of important civil service positions are staffed from outside the service.

Is this the government’s way of signalling that the capacity of the civil service is inadequate? At the same time, the government sings praises of the proficiency of the corporate culture, often exhorting civil servants to emulate the ruthlessness of the company bosses.

Obviously, the present government is unmindful of the fact that the public sector has a responsibility to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number, and this is an activity for which the public sector is morally accountable. Its purpose is not merely to increase pecuniary profits at any moral cost. It seems that the corporate governance culture touted by the government is a thinly veiled attempt to weaken the moral fundamentals of the public service.

Living in an era of media scrutiny, presentation and appearances are of supreme interest to governments. The icing being more important than the cake, a National Commission on Government Reform (NCGR) was established last year with Dr Ishrat Husain in the chair. His credentials are impeccable but his fidelity to the cause of civil service reform has yet to be established.

Having charted its own path, the NCGR seemed visibly hesitant, at least in the beginning, to address structural issues of public sector management. Therefore, so far, it has confined itself to some cosmetic pruning and piecemeal process engineering. The NCGR does not seem ready to appraise the aftermath of devolution and the impact of the demise of a generalist cadre. It appears to be a self-perpetuating smokescreen to hide the burial of the independence of the civil service.

Will future political dispensations realise the absolute necessity of a competent civil service and restructure it on sound foundations, giving it institutional support and autonomy? Or will it continue to reap the harvest of a politicised, weakened, perverted and vulnerable civil service that works to the advantage of individual masters and to the detriment of the state?

The writer is a former Establishment Secretary.

CDA’s failure to manage its sewers

NOT much functions in Pakistan’s capital, not even its sewers. Years of neglected maintenance and upgrading means that human excreta fails to reach the treatment plant. Often leaking sewers seep into water supply pipes; in other places choked pipes are broken to release the effluent into rainwater drains, causing serious health and sanitation problems throughout the city.

The outmoded practice of modern flush that wastes about 10 litres with each pull transfers a single person’s excreta to a place far away from him — out of sight and therefore out of mind. This is hugely expensive in terms of water use and the health hazards caused.

Further, it fails to recognise that night-soil and urine are excellent fertilisers that can boost agricultural productivity. Smaller economical and localised treatment plants have been shown to work in practice in several countries. What Pakistan lacks is the political will to move on such issues. High technology solutions are valued for the kickbacks they provide politicians and bureaucrats and hence there is no incentive for them to change.

The devious hand of a foreign government often makes it difficult for such transformations to happen. National institutions which should be pushing for change and for the use of appropriate technologies lack a strong, well-informed leadership which could stand up to turn-key technologies dumped by foreign vendors.

Despite criticism from the outset, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) opted for the hugely over-priced French sewerage system. The top-up on the fair market price has been siphoned off by the local agent of the French (the indenter, earlier an official in the CDA’s directorate of procurement) and other powerful decision-makers in Pakistan.

It is widely known that the senior officials of the CDA and their families and close relatives had an expense-paid visit to Paris costing several million rupees, prior to the signing of the contract! This sum is, however, paltry compared to the Rs2.7bn price tag for which the French arranged a sweetener loan of Rs1.6bn, the remainder coughed up by the taxpayer.

Even if the new sewerage plant came with no kickbacks, it was poorly timed. Preliminary work needed for its effective use has yet to begin. To understand this sad saga, a brief background of the sewerage system follows.

Most of the sewerage lines, the large trunk-lines and the tributaries, are almost as old as Islamabad itself — 45 years. Had the pipes been properly maintained and enlarged to handle the increased load due to the high population growth, the newly commissioned plants would have been justified. Today, the sewage that trickles in at the plants is well below the capacity of the existing plants.

Such commonsense decision-making seems alien to the chairmen of the CDA. This position is regarded by ambitious civil servants as a stepping stone towards becoming federal secretary. With so many senior federal bureaucrats and leaders watching what the chairman does, brownie points are awarded on visible projects such as the decoration and widening of roads, setting up leisure spots, building monuments and sanctioning large projects, with little regard for environmental sustainability.

The existing system of rewards does not give credit for instituting solid infrastructure maintenance and development — flashiness is the only thing that counts. Large contracts are preferred for another reason too: they rake in the money for those who sanction them.

Two important institutions of the state can help make the CDA a model for other cities. The Supreme Court can take suo motu action against its projects and through it help reform its governance structure, its planning and implementation wings. The other is the Planning Commission.

The commission and its environmental wing clearly failed to assess holistically the sewerage system needs of the capital and took the easy route of just nodding its acquiescence to the French plant — all projects with a foreign loan element go for approval at the highest level via the commission.

The reform of the ineffectual Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (PEPA), the watchdog of all environmentally sensitive projects, is overdue — it needs to be made autonomous and strengthened. What is also needed is the support of the commission to indigenise appropriate technologies. These are freely available and their introduction will reduce dependence on inappropriate, expensive and unsustainable technologies from foreign sources. What are they waiting for?

The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist with an interest in issues of environment, education and science.

Washington’s Cuba detour

BOGGED down in Iraq and Afghanistan, obsessed with Iran’s rise as a regional power (a direct result of the wars in the aforementioned countries) the US State Department has woken up to the fact that South America is in turmoil. Their last major intervention in the region was a crude attempt to topple the democratically elected government in Venezuela.

This was in 2002, a year before the adventure in Iraq. Since then a wave of Bolivarian unity has swept the continent, successful in Bolivia and Ecuador, creating ripples in Peru and Paraguay and, above all, breaking the long isolation of Cuba. It is this that is causing the panic in Miami.

This tiny island that has defied imperial intervention, bullying and blockade for almost half a century remains an imperial obsession. Washington has been waiting for Fidel Castro to die so that it could try and bribe senior military and police officials (and no doubt some well-chosen party apparatchiks) to defect. Bush’s speech of Oct 24 is a sign of panic. He was so convinced that mega bucks would do the trick that he had not done too much in recent years.

But now we are told, without any sense of irony, that Raul Castro is unacceptable because he is Fidel’s brother. This is not the transition that Washington had in mind. It’s a bit rich coming from Washington, given his own family connections, not to mention the fact that if Mrs Clinton is nominated and wins, two families will have been in power for over two decades. And dynastic politics is now so deeply ingrained in official culture that it is being happily mimicked in tiny circles (the editorial chair of the neo-con mag Commentary has been smoothly handed over from father to son Podhoretz).

What has worried the Bush brothers and their clientele in Florida is the fact that Raul Castro has inaugurated a debate on the island encouraging an open discussion on its future. This is not popular with apparatchiks, but is undoubtedly having an impact. State censorship is not only deeply unpopular but has crippled creative thought on the island. The new opening has brought all the old contradictions to the fore. Cuban film-makers are publicly challenging the bureaucrats. Pavel Giroud, a well-known director, explains how the censorship works:

‘Censorship works here just like it does everywhere, except that because it’s Cuba, it’s closely scrutinised. It isn’t a national monopoly. Every television network and publication in the world has its guidelines for broadcasting or editing, and whatever does not fit the requirements gets left out. HBO in the States refused to broadcast Oliver Stone’s documentary about Fidel Castro, because it didn’t take the focus that the network wanted. So they insisted on another interview with Fidel. In other words, what Stone wanted to say about his interviewee didn’t matter — what mattered was what the network wanted to show…

‘Personally, I prefer that a work of mine not be broadcast, rather than be told to change my shots or remove footage. Nor am I interested in hearing their explanations. The mere fact of being silenced is so serious that the reason why pales in comparison, because it will never be a good enough reason for the person who is silenced…Banality and lack of creativity are favoured everywhere.

Turn on any music video channel in the world, and you’ll see that for every artistically worthwhile video, you have to put up with several others…. the same buttocks writhing around the machista reggaeton star, the same seductive gestures by the “in” singers, the same slow-moving shots of love scenes at sunset, the same sheen on the biceps, the same sensual moves, the same phony little smiles. I think we in Cuba are definitely not the principal producers of these.

‘The same happens in politics — there is opportunism on both sides, by the makers and by the broadcasters. The broadcasters know that a video full of praise for the system won’t make any trouble for them, and the creators know perfectly well that they will get on television much faster if they write a song, produce a video or film, or paint a picture in praise of a political figure…’

That the Cuban system needs to be reformed is widely accepted in the country. I have been told often that the decision ‘forced on us by the embargo’ to follow the old Soviet model was ‘not beneficial’.

The choice now is Washington or Caracas. And while a tiny layer of the Cuban elite will be tempted by the dollars, most Cubans would prefer a different model. They will not wish to see an end to their health and education systems, but they do want more economic and political diversity, even though the model of the Big Neighbour under whose shadow they live does not exactly offer that choice.

The writer is author of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope” (Verso).

Al Qaeda comes to town

THIRTEEN hours into the carnival-like atmosphere at the rally celebrating Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming, the enthusiastic teeming masses were enjoying themselves.

And then amid the noise of the firecrackers and the beat of the dhol, violence hit with deadly precision killing almost 150 people. Who did this and why? What impact will this have on the future of Pakistani politics?

We may never know the identity of those behind the October 18/19 blasts. More likely it is the handiwork of one of the assorted militant outfits who use Pakistan as a safe haven, often under the alleged protection of people in government.

This is the outcome of two policies, one adopted in the early 1980s and the other after 9/11. General Zia teamed up with the Americans in their bid to turn Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam.

Pakistanis were not told that turning the country into a proxy battlefield between the two superpowers would entail more than just receiving F-16 aircraft. It meant opening the door for all types of militants from different parts of the world.

Fast forward the clock to October 2001 and Pakistan was once again lined up with the United States in the latter’s ‘war on terror’. Ironically, the Musharraf regime is hunting down people who are the children of the Reagan-Zia jihad.

As a result of the Zia and Musharraf policies, the country has become a turf for vicious wars fought over matters that are not solely Pakistan’s concern.

Ms Bhutto has pledged to fight hand-in-hand with Musharraf the war blessed by Bush. She was warned and then almost killed on Oct 19 mainly because of her stance over the US-led ‘war on terror’ that the jihadi guests based in Pakistan find unacceptable enough to sanction her assassination.

Innocent and unsuspecting Pakistanis, whose lives were snuffed out in Karachi, were the latest victims of the crossfire between Bush and Bin Laden.

What point does the Oct 19 carnage prove? Both Ms Bhutto and her sworn enemies have made their point quite convincingly. Ms Bhutto demonstrated that she is the only politician in the country on whose call millions still voluntarily turn up. Her enemies proved she is not safe and that they can breach the security cordon.

Ms Bhutto’s physical movement in Pakistan would be more restricted now. This would adversely affect her ability to reach out to the masses. This may turn out to be a big handicap for the PPP if elections take place as promised.

What about the planners of the attack? Concern for innocent lives is not high on their agenda. This means that if Ms Bhutto continues her mass contact campaign, more bloodshed can’t be ruled out. Pakistanis are paying with blood for the choices their rulers made to join American wars.

hnizamani@hotmail.com