IN Pakistan, the demise of local government institutions was swift and crushing. Initially, the provincial governments interfered in the management of local governments and, eventually, the reconstitution of West Pakistan as a unitary empire under the One Unit scheme put an end to all meaningful local and provincial autonomy. The inner logic of the culture of power of the new Pakistani elite very quickly reverted to the classical pattern of arbitrariness. In any event, if chief ministers and the Supreme Court lacked the will to resist the arbitrary exercise of executive power, it was hardly fair to expect the mayor of Karachi to do the same.
The present Pakistani leadership has decided the panacea this country needs consists primarily of placing the civilian bureaucracy at the mercy of the local politician. This approach, which ostensibly aspires to transform Pakistan into a robust and dynamic participatory democracy, ignores the root cause of Pakistan’s crisis of governance. In the first place, few would seriously entertain the notion that the events of October 1999 would not have occurred if Pakistan had possessed a functioning local government organized along the lines of the devolution plan. Second, there was no popular demand in Pakistan for a sweeping devolution plan in October 1999. Third, given the economic costs and the administrative confusion that it entails, the devolution plan’s utility and relevance are both questionable. Fourth, the creation of local governments was itself the outcome of the arbitrary exercise of executive power. Last, the proponents and opponents of the devolution plan seem oblivious of the nature of Pakistan’s culture of power and its impact on the quality of governance.
It is evident that Pakistan, located on a continental landmass, possessed of a large standing army, a powerful bureaucracy, and a predatory political class, is an unenlightened, irrational, continental bureaucratic state. This troika controls the state in an authoritarian manner. The executive, civilian or military, has always demonstrated an unhealthy interest in the affairs of the bureaucratic management. The relationship between the rulers and the ruled (not to mention amongst themselves) is adversarial, riven by insincerity, and prone to generating political uncertainty and economic insecurity. This relationship is, above all, a symptom of our culture of power.
The impropriety, viciousness, partisanship, sycophancy, and the self-aggrandizing manner in which successive governments and their acolytes have conducted themselves are the practical manifestations of this culture of power. Indeed, the Oct 12, 1999, coup was the direct result of the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif exercising his legal prerogative in a capricious manner. Democracy, legal or participatory, cannot subsist, let alone thrive, in an environment where personal whims and improvization are valued more than bureaucratic regularity, respect for private property, and human rights. Our political leadership, be they country club Marxists, crony capitalists, or saviours in uniform, have failed thus far to understand the nature of Pakistan’s crisis of state.
Pakistan’s salvation lies not in hastily “empowering” 140 million people, military dictatorship, or even a mere return to unrestrained electoral democracy. What is needed is a genuinely long-term approach that gives Pakistan the time and guidance necessary to emerge as an enlightened continental bureaucratic state. It is time that our leaders get to work on a long-term plan that reforms, remunerates, and re-invigorates the bureaucracy — which is the key player in all legal democracies and continental bureaucratic states — and acknowledges the cultural and central nature of the present crisis. Devolution and participatory democracy, as practised in England and envisaged by the devolution plan, can come, but only after several generations of legal democracy and socio-economic development.
Sadly, since independence, the quality of Pakistan’s bureaucracy has deteriorated for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the greatest is the erosion of the institutional autonomy of the bureaucracy brought about by arbitrary interference in recruitment, transfers, and dismissals. No less vital is undermining the integrity of principal mechanism of government was the decline in the purchasing power of public sector salaries combined with increasing government control and ownership of the economy.
This decline in performance has led many to argue that what is bad for the bureaucracy must be good for the people. This line of argument conveniently ignores the role that politicization and militarization have played in bringing about the current state of affairs. The latest manifestation of this school of thought’s scheme for Pakistan is the surreal devolution plan, which has created a new class of about 70,000 grassroots democrats drawing government salaries and responsible for the utilization of public funds and international aid. At best, the introduction of these governments has left the quality of governance unaffected. At worst, it has engendered anarchic conditions, exacerbated local rivalries, and led to increased corruption and wastage. Clearly it is far less difficult and more economical to try and reform our bureaucracy, commit ourselves to an extended period of legal democracy, and strive for good governance, rather than trying to imitate yet another foreign system. The key ingredient in any meaningful reform of the exercise of power in Pakistan is the reduction in the level of arbitrariness in decision-making and implementation. By rendering the district management subservient to local politicians who perceive the state as a personal estate and are subject to extreme pressures to abuse power in favour of their partisans, and by increasing the powers of the police, the level of arbitrariness, exacerbated by confusion, has risen. Moreover, the local governments have no real autonomy, as they are, like the Pakistani nation at large, culturally incapable of self-taxation — the essential requirement for all self-government. This is expressed in the proportion of taxes collected by the central government. Under the British Empire in India, the centre collected 55 per cent of taxes, the provinces 45 per cent. In Pakistan, the same ratio is in the range of 90 per cent to 10 per cent. More recently, provincial governments are out to out the local governments in their place by appointing administrators and reducing the number of elected local representatives by about 40 per cent. This interference is reminiscent of the first decade of independence.
Those that wish to revert to the old system of omnipotent sub-sovereigns also miss the point. In our cultural context it is manifestly unwise to give any single office judicial and executive powers, especially when that office is assaulted by demands for patronage from powerful individuals determined to break or bend the law to suit their own interests. Reverting to an unreformed executive magistracy is rendered even more dangerous by the fact that since independence the intellectual and moral level of the civil service had degenerated catastrophically. A more moderate, and presumably more enlightened, path would involve assessing the problem at three levels — local government, the executive magistracy, and the bureaucracy in general.
At the level of local government, the system of district boards, and mayors destroyed in the first decade of independence must be revived. These institutions can handle portfolios that directly affect the lives of the local people, such as health, sanitation, roads, and education. The money for this can come from two sources. The first, and most important, would be taxes that the local bodies would be empowered to vote, and raise, autonomously of the provincial and central governments. The collection of taxes could be supervised by the central or provincial financial administration. The second is that provincial governments establish a fund with which to help localities deal with shortfalls, provided the local governments raise at least half of the funds on their own. Such steps would probably lead to slowdown in “development” spending at the local level. They alone, however, can train citizens to handle the risks, responsibilities, and, in the long-term, rewards, that emanate from self-taxation. No money from international donors should be given to local governments unless they demonstrate willingness to tax themselves — a beggar’s democracy, which is what has been put in place by the devolution plan, is utterly degrading.
The second level involves reform of the magistracy and police at the local level. The police in each district can be made answerable to the district judges, as has been successfully done in many parts of India since its independence. All, or most, powers of magistracy must not be returned to the district magistrates, especially their old supervisory powers over the police. In many respects, this change would make our set-up more like the one introduced by Cornwallis in Bengal in the 1780s and ‘90s, with the police and collectors answerable to the judiciary.
The third level, which is also the most important, involves reform of the mechanism of government, that is, the bureaucracy at the central and provincial levels.
It is only by insulating the members of the bureaucracy from the whims of the central, provincial, and local, political leaderships, that Pakistan can ever hope to function as a collective of autonomous institutions regulated by law, rather than a servile set of increasingly blunt and rusted instruments subservient to capricious and venal overlords. This, taken together with an improvement in pay scales and reform of the recruitment system can, in the long-run, restore order to society and, in so doing, better tap the constructive potential of citizens.
