FEDERAL Interior Minister Syed Mohsin Naqvi deserves praise for speaking in public what we all concede in private — that Pakistan is heading for a political and economic crisis unless we fundamentally change our course. Policymakers, legislatures, and career politicians see the crisis coming, but their private interests prevent them from broaching the subject.
It fell to a relatively newcomer to break the silence. The minister must be credited for casting the first stone. The minister highlighted two key failures. An ineffective state that cannot deliver basic services to its citizens and an anaemic economy that cannot generate sufficient tax revenues to finance the federal budget. The two problems have been festering for decades.
Successive democratic governments adopted the politically sensible strategy of ‘kicking the can down the road’. Now the problems have reached crisis proportions. In his warning shot, the minister beseeched the politicians to avert the impending catastrophe by jointly finding a solution.
The governance crisis is evident, most tragically, in the number of terrorist incidents. In 2026, Pakistan ranked first on the Global Terrorism Index, and was “the country most impacted by terrorism”. It is also one of the top 10 countries facing acute food shortages. According to the World Health Organisation, up to 55 per cent of Pakistan’s population lacks safely managed potable water. Because of malnutrition, nearly 40pc of children under five suffer from stunting. Nearly 36pc of school-age children are out of school.
The country ranks globally in the bottom 15-20pc of the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, a consequence of deficiencies in security and pervasive corruption. The minister aptly described the country’s governance system as having “collapsed”.
The state’s lost capacity will not be regained by increasing the number of provinces.
Economically, Pakistan is at the bottom of the lower-middle-income band. Erratic growth since 2008 has pushed Pakistan below many of its South Asian neighbours in per capita GDP. Pakistan has run an annual budgetary shortfall for over 50 years.
The country runs an annual trade deficit of over $30 billion. Debt servicing consumes roughly 50pc of total tax revenues. With the current debt-to-GDP ratio hovering around 70pc, Pakistan is certain to miss the target of bringing the debt down to 50pc of GDP by financial year 2032-2033 as mandated by the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act. Pakistan has utilised 25 lending and financial support arrangements with the IMF, more than any other country in the world. Again, Naqvi is correct in describing Pakistan’s economic situation as unsustainable.
The weakest part of the minister’s speech, however, was not his identification of the problem but the solution. He asserted that we significantly increase the number of provinces. An increase in the number of administrative units, he implied, would bring public services to people’s doorsteps and result in the quick redressal of businessmen’s grievances. He, however, did not explain the causal link between the number of administrative units on the one hand and state effectiveness and robust economic performance on the other.
Afghanistan, approximately 25pc smaller than Pakistan in terms of area and 5.7 times smaller when measured by population, is divided into 34 provinces. Those who argue for more provinces cite Afghanistan as evidence. But Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world with almost no modern state institutions. Canada, on the other hand, is 12 times bigger than Pakistan in landmass but has only 10 provinces. A member of the G7, Canada has a generous social welfare system. There does not appear to be any causal link between state effectiveness and economic progress and number of provinces.
The delivery of public services is one of the characteristics of a modern state. Other features include a monopoly on power, a standing professional army, the presence of a Weberian bureaucracy, ability to draw long-term plans, and the capacity to effectively enforce laws and policies.
In Pakistan, state effectiveness reached its peak in the first half of 1960s during the implementation of the Second Five-Year Plan. Democratic governments, beginning in the 1970s, destroyed state capacity through nepotism, corruption and patronage. Civil bureaucracy gradually lost its essence of impersonality, specialisation, merit, hierarchy of authority and a rational-legal basis. The state’s lost capacity will not be regained by increasing the number of provinces.
The majority of farmers in Pakistan remain engaged in subsistence agriculture. An agricultural economy cannot generate sufficient resources to sustain a modern state and a modern military. Western nations can fund social welfare programmes and keep large standing armies because of the surplus generated by their industrial economic base. The shift from an agricultural to industrial economy took centuries to complete in the West, starting with the Industrial Revolution. Only a handful of non-Western nations, mostly in East Asia, have been able to make this transition.
The emergence of a globally competitive industrial economy requires the presence of a host of enabling factors. The number of provinces is not one of them. Increasing the number of provinces, while keeping intact the current democratic framework, is unlikely to improve state effectiveness or boost economic output. It will not result in delegation of authority but in devolution of corruption, incompetence, and abuse of power. More provinces, however, may break the stranglehold of regressive political forces, tipping the balance of power in favour of the state. But the state must be administratively ready to reap the dividend at the centre. Pakistan suffers from lack of modernisation of its state, society, and politics. The country is poor because we have failed to transition from agricultural to industrial economy. These deep-seated structural problems cannot be solved by increasing the number of provinces.
The writer has a background in public administration. He has worked with international financial institutions including the World Bank.
Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2026
