The disappointing performance of past regimes made the citizens of the country accept hardship and deprivation as their fate. Is there any way of bringing about a change?

BY now ordinary Pakistanis have become all too familiar with the well-established pattern — a Messiah-like arrival, an increasingly disappointing performance and an unceremonial back door departure of the successive political and military governments in Pakistan. They are no longer enthusiastic or excited at the arrival of a new government as they have learnt that governments have little relevance to improving the quality of their lives. They have come to accept hardship and deprivation as fait accompli — a reality they must come to terms with.

Thus, resigned to the idea of any betterment from the state, they remain pitched in a battle for daily survival and find new methods to beat the dysfunctional system that stopped delivering a long time back. It is a sad story of an incompetent state machinery failing to give direction, create opportunities and provide basic facilities to those on whose shoulders it receives the charter to govern.

There are many reasons for having arrived at this unenviable junction, none of which are intended to be discussed in this article. All that is intended is to try to explore possibilities of small things that can be done to bring about a change. One is hesitant to talk of big things. They make good slogans, but rarely get done. After performing the opening ceremonies, the government runs out on steam, resources or tenure. The next government scraps the previous projects, and starts off on the ones that seem more lucrative to the new incumbents. It is the small steps that make a contribution which is often more significant than their large-sized counterparts, when knitted together into the whole. They just do it more quietly, because most people consider these small actions as pieces of a puzzle rather than looking at the puzzle itself.

One has little evidence to conclude that the freshly-installed Jamali government will perform any differently. The years in power tend to fly fast, and the whistle gets blown when one is still warming up. Unless a government can give a serious and early thought to how and what it wishes to accomplish, it could be conveniently bogged down in a daily routine of inanities and banalities — a perfect prescription for looking busy without accomplishing anything. It is therefore important to think of as many small things (besides the long-term projects) that can be achieved during this period and give serious thought to how they may possibly be accomplished. Things that may slowly begin to add more value to the quality of life of the ordinary people of this country. Let us, for the sake of simplicity, divide a government’s five years tenure into a planning phase (the first year), and two implementation phases of two years each. Nothing is likely to be accomplished unless the government has a plan, a target or an objective. It is, therefore, appropriate to spend the first year in trying to understand the problems, collect facts and data, plan strategy and methods, create processes and policies, allocate human and other resources, and define milestones for performance and targets.

The next phase (next two years) needs to be committed to implementation of the planned activities and monitoring the achievement of results. The second implementation phase (last two years) should include reviewing the performance of the first three years, learning from the mistakes, improving upon the plans and achieving yet higher results. The current government is already almost halfway down its first year and at this rate it would have travelled many miles without going anywhere. However, it still has an opportunity to stop its day-to-day fire-fighting and start serious planning to undertake a series of small things (do-able projects) that could be achieved in the next four years.

This “small things to do” list is not necessarily in any particular sequence. Most of the tasks could and must be performed simultaneously. Regardless of the varying degree of success for each activity, a course would have been charted and a beginning made in the right direction. Each task must have a “process owner”, which could be both a ministry and an outstanding project manager. Needless to say, that disinterested officials can torpedo the best of plans.

Let us begin by improving one of the most neglected aspects of our society — the 200,000 or so government schools. Faiz recognized this need in his beautiful couplet:

“Woh maasoom jo bholpun main
wahaan apne nannhe chiroghon main lo ki lagan
le ke pohnche jahan
butrahe thay ghata top, be-ant raton ke sae”

It is possible for the government to take many small steps to improve the schools’ performance in the first two years. The government can: provide a library with a hundred interesting books in each school; have a science lab in each school equipped with simple science experiments using day-to-day inexpensive materials; improve the text books and teaching methods, ensure stoppage of physical punishments; provide clean drinking water and clean toilet facility in each school; make every school teacher undergo a one-week course to learn about more stimulating, interesting and participative style of teaching and unlearn the rote method.

The nature of exams could be changed from testing the memory to checking the understanding. A national criteria for performance and excellence of schools can be created to not only provide guidance on what parameters to improve, but also provide a uniform methodology to evaluate and rate performance of schools across the country. The second phase could see doubling the number of books in school libraries, adding equipment to school laboratories and further improving upon the school processes.

Ordinary citizens have few opportunities to participate in social, cultural and civic activities. The limited participatory contact creates a narrowness of thought and intolerance of the views of others. We need to build community centres in all localities (one for every 200,000 persons in the first phase, and one for every 100,000 persons in the next phase). The centres could house a public library, a basic literacy centre, a free family planning centre and a multipurpose hall which could be used for audio-visual displays, art and craft exhibitions, drama, poetry, literature, debates, lectures on disease prevention, mental health, environments, self-help, and other awareness-raising activities. Once established, the community centres could sustain themselves by charging a very small fee for their usage.

Although the availability of land is not an issue with the government, there are few parks and playgrounds that are accessible to ordinary citizens. It is a common sight to see vehicles and cricket being simultaneously hosted by the same patch of road. The government must build at least a large public park and a playground for every 100,000 people in the first phase and double this number in the second phase. Some of the well-maintained public parks in Lahore could be role-modelled on issues of management and maintenance of parks.

Providing helpful information about the services provided by an organization is by itself an important aspect of the service. In the first phase, every government department should be required to create an information website which describes the functions of the department, the services it offers, the exact process for people to avail these services, the time taken to provide these services, the forms that can be downloaded or filled on the net itself, the department’s phone numbers that provide help, and how complaints and feedback can be sent directly to the head of the department. These should be functional websites, updated regularly and devoid of slogans, speeches or irrelevant photographs.

The provincial education department website should include factual data regarding every school of the province. This could include the exact location, the number of classes, teachers, students, teacher absenteeism, children who are enrolled and those who drop out each year. The provincial police could provide data regarding the location of each police station, its phone numbers, incident reporting procedure, number and type of crimes committed everyday, criminals apprehended, cases resolved and those still pending. Similarly, the web sites of the district and high courts should display not just the basic facts about the cases admitted, decided and pending, but also on how an ordinary citizen can approach a court for seeking justice without going through the costly lawyers.

There can be no improvement unless one can measure what is intended to be improved. The government departments must be asked to define standards for the services they provide and display this information on their websites, as well as newspapers and offices. Each department must publicly state what its service standards are.

Let us consider some examples to explain how these standards may be defined. A hospital ambulance service may state that 8 out of 10 times the ambulance will reach the patient within 10 minutes. A fire brigade service could set a standard for reaching 9 out of 10 times in 7 minutes. In 95% cases, the national identity card will be issued in 10 days. In 90% cases, the telephone department will install a new phone connection in 5 days or less. The High Courts will decide 60% cases within 60 days and 30% in less than 120 days period.

The great advantage of setting up these standards is that they create a baseline for performance improvement. They also send out a strong message that every citizen will be served in a pre-defined time, regardless of his status, influence or background.

State is the largest provider of services in Pakistan. However, it is least interested in determining the extent to which its citizens (who happen to be its real customers) are served or (dis)satisfied with its services. Most civilized countries have an on-going programme of determining the customer satisfaction index for the services provided by various departments and ministries of the government.

It would be an extremely rewarding step for Pakistan to create a customer satisfaction monitoring body, which carries out independent surveys to monitor both the customer complaints as well as the customer perception for various government departments. The results should be widely publicised and the departments asked to progressively improve their customer satisfaction rating. This could be done by reducing the customer’s waiting time, reducing the number of visits required to receive a service, improving courtesy, simplifying forms and procedures and enhancing the level of information provided to the customers.

One sure way would be to link the promotion of senior staff with the customer satisfaction rating achieved by the department. In the first phase, customer satisfaction indices should be established for departments that have the greatest contact with the public. These could be departments that provide or deal with identity cards, passports, driving licenses, post office, electricity, railways, banks, telephones, municipal committees, tax collection, police, stations, courts, health and education. More departments could be added in the next phase.

Most western countries have made it extremely easy for the citizens to pay their bills and taxes. In Pakistan, it is a painful exercise. The ordinary citizens of this country have to suffer the constant hassle of random arrival, late arrival and non-arrival of various types of utility bills, with different payment deadlines requiring multiple trips and waiting in irritatingly long queues.

Why can’t the government ask all the utility service organizations (electricity, gas and telephone) to ensure that their bills are sent to customers, say by 10th of each month. This could be declared as the last date for receipt of bills. Likewise, the 25th of each month can be declared as the last date for payment of bills, giving citizens two clear weeks to make the payment at a time of their convenience. The government can further facilitate this process by providing additional and simpler modes for payment, that do not require a citizen to go through the torture of personally visiting the government department. These could be payment through Internet (using credit cards), through bank cheques, post offices, drop box services, and authorized courier services.

Availability and condition of public toilets in a country is a reflection of the concern that a state has for the basic biological needs of its citizens. The total absence of public toilets has de facto legitimized the usage of alternate sites such as nooks, corners, walls and roadsides. A large population knows only the alternate sites as a standard operating procedure.

One of the small things that needs to be done is to build a public toilet for every 10,000 persons in the first phase and every 5000 persons in the next phase. Making and maintaining decent public toilets (for men and women) is not just meeting a basic need, but is also giving them a feeling of respect and importance. Maintaining public toilets is perhaps even more difficult than building them. One sure way to keep them clean and well-maintained is to remove all private attached toilets from the offices of high officials and ask them to use the public toilets instead.

There are dozens of other small things that can be added to this list. None of these tasks need technology or resources that are not already available. Neither do they require World Bank or IMF loans. The people of Pakistan can design, create, implement and maintain these projects. In return, they would create new jobs, new opportunities, new experiences, new thinking and, above all, a new realization that for once the State is beginning to appear relevant to the lives of the ordinary people.