Effective policy

Published November 25, 2015
The writer is deputy secretary administration, government of Balochistan.
The writer is deputy secretary administration, government of Balochistan.

PUBLIC policy is supposed to forward the public interest. Governments exist to do so. However, this is far from the case in Balochistan, where public policy is engineered in a quirky manner.

The current provincial government — a nationalist one — was supposed to have an ideological base; thus many had great expectations from it. On the contrary, nothing much of value has been witnessed in terms of public policy management. Not much has changed for the common man.

Though Balochistan is the largest province geographically, public policy management here is found to be in an unenviable state. Successive governments have been unable to implement policy properly. The mismanagement has given rise to multiple problems in sectors including economics, health, education and agriculture.

For instance, recently the government decided to do away with the practice of cheating in the secondary- and intermediate-level examinations. The cabinet decided to take firm steps in this regard. The departmental administrative secretaries and the deputy commissioners were charged with inspecting the examination halls to ensure cheating was stopped. With exams over, the result declared was as expected. The number of candidates who passed was abysmal.


People had expected much from the Balochistan government.


Resultantly, students attacked the board office. Police came to the rescue after much ado. The chief executive of the province, baffled and surprised by the reaction to the policy initiative, constituted a committee to look into the complaints submitted by the students. The students who had failed wanted to be given pass marks. A suitable question could be: was stopping cheating alone the solution? Wasn’t overall improvement of the academic system also one of the related factors?

Then, the education department was divided into two: the secondary schools department and the colleges and higher education department. The decision to do so was taken by the previous government in an effort to reduce the burden and help improve the performance of the departments. The sitting government, without any reason, reversed the decision and merged both departments. We came back to where our journey began.

Moreover, the Quetta Water and Sanitation Authority has become a white elephant which earns less and spends more. The authority has turned into a perfect example of how public policy can fail badly. Yet matters at the utility continue as ‘normal’, with a large fleet of employees and unnecessary expenditure. The government seems to have no interest in reforming the organisation.

Similarly, the Public Sector Development Programme is also managed as per the whims and wishes of the elected representatives as it involves ‘their funds’ and ‘their money’. To what extent is a scientific approach applied and result-based management ensured is a question that remains to be answered.

The youth bulge also remains an unaddressed issue with the government relying on the primitive idea of providing jobs in the public sector. Youth capital is neither skilled nor trained to capture potential world markets.

The miseries of the health department are the same as other government bodies. Long queues, not enough facilities, no care and degeneration all around are the traits of public policy in the health sector. Public health services in tertiary-care hospitals have gone from bad to worse. Private hospitals have expanded unchecked. Drugs controls are ineffective and the black market thrives.

Public policy, by virtue of its definition, indicates that it is meant to benefit the public. But how much our policies truly benefit the people is a serious question. There seem to be hardly any policy which is engineered, framed, im­ple­mented, ex­e­­cuted, re­­viewed and read­just­ed pro­perly. Result-based management is nowhere to be seen. When observed by an expert of public policy, nothing of great significance for the welfare of the public seems to have been done by the government. The same old mantra is repeated, that things will be reformed, but no one seems to know how and when.

The government has to understand what public policy is and how to adopt it in a way that engenders positive results. Doing a lot sometimes may not be required; instead, doing less but in a planned manner may be more effective. The people of Balochistan are constantly given hope; yet this must be translated into tangible benefits for them through the development of effective public policy. The failure of public policy results in a miserable state of affairs. The public, disgruntled, loses both hope and trust in democracy. Governance nosedives and matters start deteriorating fast.

Hence it is essential that the government machinery in Balochistan comprehends the problems through the framework of public policy which can resolve many of the significant problems the people face.

The writer is deputy secretary administration, government of Balochistan.

jahangeer.kakar@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2015

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