ACCORDING to a news report, the Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms, Ahsan Iqbal, told the Senate last month that “the national human resource crisis and brain drain was so severe that no one was found fit for the slot of the chief economist in recent years”. This despite the fact that the government had advertised quite widely for the position.

The human resource situation is indeed critical: the quality of education in Pakistan is generally quite poor. And few people are able to go abroad to attend good institutions. Very few of those who do come back. But it is neither a new thing nor is it confined to economists. We have the same problem with people who are ‘fit’ to be politicians, bureaucrats, generals and judges.

In this case the minister was being somewhat ingenuous in treating the lack of response to the advertised position as an indicator of lack of supply. Another possibility that he chose to ignore and overlook was that potential candidates did not find the position attractive enough to apply for it.

Here might be some reasons. The last full-time and long-term incumbent was removed from the position for alleged differences with the government. Since then vice chancellors of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics have had the additional charge of chief economist, or the position has been filled by people who were never accused of being independent-minded.

The issue is more general. Governments here tend not to give any space to independent-minded experts, do not want to hear them or listen to them, but they want the experts’ endorsement for whatever they want to do. They want people of reputation to be pliant and to endorse government positions and policies.

There could not be a better way of telling the story than to see the fate of the last few State Bank governors. Some were appointed, whatever their suitability for the position, for having the right connections with the government of the day. But still, given the dynamics of the position, as soon as incumbents had something to say that did not sound good to the government or did not suit powerful interests, they were shown the door.

The search is again on for someone who has decent qualifications but is pliant enough. It does not bode well for the ‘independence’ of the institution, but politicians, with limited time horizons, would not be too bothered about the medium- to long-term impact of their decisions on institutions.

And it is not just about economists. The PML-N government came in with big plans about bringing in a lot of new chief executives for state-owned enterprises, for various boards and so on, and promises of better, more professional governance, but little of this has materialised thus far.

One heard that they had lists of people, running into the thousands that they wanted to contact. But very few appointments have been made. In fact, one hears of many expatriates and locals declining lucrative offers for such positions. And many of the appointments that have been made have been of people related, some literally, to the high-ups in PML-N.

Some members of the Economic Advisory Council, formed by the finance ministry last year, said, after the second meeting of the council, that the government was taking all the time for meetings to give information to the council members but was not interested in listening to what the members had to say. A number of members had been quite disappointed by how the government was using (or not using) the expertise of the people in the council.

Recently a colleague, who is on a number of government committees at the provincial level, said he felt he was a box that all the relevant departments, bureaucrats and politicians wanted to tip to say they had consulted the expert, but his advice was hardly ever heeded. Most of the time he was not even put on the committees that he thought he could contribute to the most.

This experience is not uncommon. We have seen situations where critics of a policy have been silenced by the government that has ignored their advice, dropped them from the concerned committee or not included them in relevant discussions or committees.

A colleague once said he was very passionate about a particular area and in being a part of the dialogue on reform in that area. But, in the end, whereas he was appointed to a lot of committees, he was not appointed to the one looking after the area he was the most passionate about.

If the government wants to have experts, individuals with sound reputations and, in some cases, integrity, to be involved and to lend their shoulder to the government effort, they have to create the space for such people. The government will have to listen to what experts say, and it will have to face dissent too. That is exactly why the government should be hiring these experts. If the government is unable to signal that credibly, it will continue to face the scarcity that was mentioned by the minister. The latter also said that salary levels needed to be revised to make government positions more attractive. That might be part of the issue but it will not address the larger concerns.

The writer is senior adviser, Pakistan, at Open Society Foundations, associate professor of economics, LUMS, and a visiting fellow at IDEAS, Lahore.