Red tape

Published May 16, 2014

STATE bureaucracies are notorious for being both opaque and unresponsive to the needs of the very citizens they are supposed to serve. In post-colonial countries where citizenship is itself a pipe dream, their reputation is especially bad.

We in Pakistan have been witness to many a general, judge and politician promising to eliminate corruption and nepotism within state institutions and delivering the country from the clutches of bureaucracy. These promises have never borne fruit. It is time we delved deeper to investigate exactly why the bureaucratic behemoth has never been tamed. In short, before proposing ‘solutions’, we must understand the ‘problem’.

To begin with, the state bureaucracy is a crucial cog in our political-economic order and it is hence impossible for it to be radically overhauled in isolation. Granted the ‘system’ looks and feels somewhat different now to when the British created the so-called ‘steel frame’ to manage their Indian colony. Yet even if the state bureaucracy no longer exercises unchallenged power in the body politic, the system does not function without it. Ignoring the bureaucracy’s symbiotic relationship to other power brokers is inexcusable.

In most accounts the civilian bureaucratic apparatus bequeathed to us by colonialism was dealt a hammer blow by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s 1973 reforms which abolished the elite Civil Services of Pakistan cadre and undermined the insularity of the higher echelons of the state bureaucracy. While Bhutto’s intervention against what he called ‘colonial mandarins’ was a turning point, it is necessary to interrogate other related changes that have shaped the evolution of the state bureaucracy, and Pakistan’s political economy more generally.

First, Pakistan is no longer a predominantly rural country generating most of its economic output from agricultural land. Yes a significant chunk of the people remains tied to the land, but the overall socio-economic structure has changed. Remember that the civilian bureaucratic apparatus was created by the British to extract revenue from the land whilst at the same time maintaining political control over the rural masses. The social formation that the bureaucracy was designed to administer is long gone, yet the obsolete administrative and policing practices remain.

Second, the state has progressively ceded more economic decision-making power to market forces. The deepening of capitalism, urbanisation and migration mean that the formal bureaucratic apparatus cannot monopolise the allocation of resources as it did during the colonial period (and a couple of decades after partition). Yet the state bureaucracy clings on to a mediatory role wherever it can.

Third, the politicisation of ethnicity, religion and other identities has affected the civilian bureaucratic apparatus. The ideal-type bureaucracy a la Weber is impersonal in composition and action. The colonial state bureaucracy was qualitatively different, but did retain the pretence of what Weber would call legal-rationality. Over the past four decades this pretence has been dispensed with entirely, and the state bureaucracy looks and acts in concert with ethnic, religious and other affiliations of those that populate it.

All three changes are encapsulated in the fact that individual state functionaries are as important in the functioning of the whole system as ever, while the state bureaucracy as a whole exhibits less coherence in terms of its appearance and actions. In other words, instead of acting in unison in the name of public interest, state functionaries use their positions to benefit themselves and parochial constituencies of their choosing.

Importantly, this is all a matter of degree. State functionaries abused their authority during the colonial period too, if not so brazenly. The fact that the bureaucracy executed relatively unified policy directives in the past did not necessarily translate into a positive net effect with regard to the welfare of the popular classes.

Still there’s something to be said for the fact that the self-perception and practice of the bureaucracy has changed significantly over recent decades. Decidedly paternalistic attitudes towards the unruly masses may not have disappeared entirely but there’s much less sociological distance between state functionaries and the populations that they serve (read: dominate).

It is thus that the exchange of favours and money is explicit at the lowest levels; those who indulge most are also keenest to avoid being found out. My experience suggests that those who rant most about corruption and nepotism are the biggest beneficiaries. The poor and voiceless suffer not only on account of the bureaucracy but also the classes, corporations and other state institutions that make this system tick. A politics of change would name all the culprits and take them on. Mere sloganeering is not politics.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2014

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