A madressah reform programme conceived in 2002 with an outlay of billions of rupees was recently scrapped after only Rs333 million had been spent. — Photo by AP

Four seemingly different news items over the past 15 days or so caught my attention. Pertaining to the conduct of the civil bureaucracy and the government’s handling of it, these news items etched an interesting picture of the government’s capacity to deliver good governance.

The first dealt with the appointment of a DMG officer as ambassador to France. The second focused on the shelving of a madressah-reform programme conceived by the education ministry in 2002 and involving a budget of billions out of which the department was unable to spend more than Rs333m and reaching a little over 500 madressahs. Although the economic affairs division refutes the claim that the education ministry received any funding from the US to carry out madressah reforms, the source of money is a tactical matter. The more important issue is that a certain, critical objective was not achieved.

The third issue concerns the behaviour of Pakistan’s consul-general in Los Angeles who wasted the taxpayer’s money to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco to welcome politician Babar Awan who was on a private visit. Finally, there was the story a BPS-20 officer dragging his boss to court alleging misconduct, something he himself was accused of. The officer apparently used high connections to have himself absolved in another matter.

How are these stories connected? Each case is a comment on why and how Pakistan suffers from a lack of capacity to deliver good governance. As I asked some senior bureaucrats whether the civil bureaucracy was capable of delivering services to the people one retorted: “If those who made sacrifices for Pakistan were to return today and be given another chance, they might not do it again.” Bitter, but very true!

Today, we do not have a system which can deliver good governance to the people although the country does not lack capable and well-trained bureaucrats. It is quite amusing to hear senior bureaucrats talk about how things were put right under their individual charge. One is always tempted to ask why the country is in such a condition if so many individuals were doing things right. Is good governance deliverable anymore when we have officers who render personal services to politicians at the taxpayer’s expense, or when there are officers who use links with top politicians to hide their misconduct?

Do we wonder why people in Pakistan are not keen to pay taxes? Why should they pay the government when they have absolutely no control over the allocation of resources? It is an open secret that despite being elected through popular ballot most politicians tend to serve their own interests or those of domestic and foreign power centres.

Any government that fails to demonstrate legitimacy in its actions will find it hard to convince the people to agree to pay taxes or declare their assets. The bureaucratic system is such that while there is no punishment for law evaders, there is no prize for those that honour the law either.

Focusing entirely on their individual acumen bureaucrats tend to disregard the argument that they suffer from an incapacity to deliver governance. Most senior civil servants are suave people who know how to conduct themselves in different environments. For instance, our diplomats have done quite well in competitive environments such as the UN. However, how can they be expected to perform when policymakers at the top are hell-bent on compromising national interests? Bureaucrats would rather lay the blame at the door of the political or military leadership.

Can civil servants really be blamed when there are flaws in policymaking? For instance, should one blame the bureaucrats when policymakers appoint the worst bureaucrats to oversee critical ministries like health and education, even agriculture? And how can the government be expected to carry out madressah reforms when there is a partnership between the PPP and the JUI-F at the top?

However, intellectuals such as Dr Mubashir Hasan argue otherwise. He is of the contention that it is the civil bureaucracy that rules the roost in Pakistan. Being one of the strongest institutions of the post-colonial state, civil bureaucrats are the ones that guide, or misguide, the political class. Indeed, there are many in Pakistan who believe that even sharp politicians like Bhutto were led astray after they fell foul of the bureaucrats.

Civil servants would challenge this contention. One of the arguments is that today’s politicians are not simpletons. In fact, those that manage technical ministries such as finance are quite well-trained and have input from multiple sources including multilateral aid donors and others.

However, the reality is that bureaucrats are as much stakeholders in the system as politicians. The country’s governance is poor because neither of these two key stakeholders (and others that are not discussed in this article) have the capacity to see the larger picture which includes the cost and benefit of any tactical move or strategic policy action. The civil servant, who said that no one would now be willing to sacrifice when others don’t, is not wrong.

The real problem is that the systems in Pakistan’s polity have completely come apart. Individuals want to outperform each other to score individually. Even the senior judiciary appears to have acquired a passion for publicity. There are no signs of building systems that deliver to the general public. So, no matter how tall the claims, the fact of the matter is that what we lack today are systems that can deliver and make brilliant individuals perform.

The blame for this absence must be pinned on the key stakeholders who are driven by their individual greed, resulting in the death of a viable system meant to deliver good governance.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com