AN effort is underway to spark a debate on creating new administrative units in the country ostensibly on the grounds that the present system is not delivering. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, whose proximity to the establishment is well known, tried to make the case. Claiming the present governance system has “collapsed”, he called for more provinces and administrative units. He offered no explanation of what “collapse” meant and how new units would magically fix Pakistan’s problems. His proposal found backing from the military spokesman. He echoed the call, urged a system “reset” and endorsed the creation of new administrative units.
Such calls are, of course, not new. Every so often, this proposal surfaces, mostly from the establishment or other interested groups. But any sweeping change has never found traction among major political parties or the public at large. This time was no different. Naqvi faced criticism from across the political spectrum. Prominent ruling party leaders questioned his statement. The PPP’s Sindh chief minister, Murad Ali Shah, roundly rejected the creation of new provinces. Awami Tehreek leaders accused the interior minister of advocating Sindh’s division. Other parties argued that an “illegitimate” government had no authority to undertake such a move. The Lahore High Court Bar Association condemned Naqvi’s proposal as unconstitutional. Its office-bearers said those responsible for the destruction of the existing order were now proposing a “new system”.
The argument that Pakistan’s governance crisis is due to the number or size of its provinces simply doesn’t hold. One can make a case for administrative reorganisation on other grounds. For example, smaller units can bring government closer to the people. But that goal can be achieved by empowering local government. In any case, the Constitution lays out a clear process for making any changes to provinces. Naqvi’s proposal implied it can be done by executive fiat. Any change including altering the boundary of any province requires a resolution passed by a two-thirds majority in the relevant provincial assembly, followed by a constitutional amendment adopted by a two-thirds majority in both the National Assembly and Senate.
The timing of this debate is baffling. The debate is being initiated at a time when one province confronts an active insurgency, a second faces mounting militant violence, and Azad Kashmir is experiencing widespread protests and civil unrest.
There is a spurious connection between the provincial configuration and the governance crisis.
Those who draw a spurious link between Pakistan’s provincial structure and its governance failures lack historical perspective of why the country today is beset with so many serious, overlapping challenges. These challenges are the cumulative result of prolonged political instability, deferred economic reforms, visionless leadership, rule without law, and a consistent preference by successive governments for foreign engagements over unresolved, festering domestic problems. External overreach and internal underreach has been a consistent pattern. Governance is adversely affected by these factors. But it is elite capture that has been the most damaging.
Elite control of state power, of politics and much of the country’s resources has ensured elite interests consistently trump public interests. The power elite — a symbiotic nexus between political and military actors — has resisted meaningful reform and avoided tackling the economy’s structural problems — tax reforms, land reforms, reforms in governance. It has ‘rentier’ characteristics: using access to public office to leverage state resources for its own gain. Elite capture is principally why governance has broken down. This has left the country with interlocking crisis: state insolvency, insecurity, poverty, crumbling education and health systems, mounting energy shortages as well as environmental degradation. At the same time, the convergence between the country’s youth bulge, economic stagnation and the education deficit poses stark risks for the future.
A closer look at Pakistan’s governance failures shows political instability to be the core driver. The country has lurched between military interventions and civilian rule in a recurring cycle, punctuated by outbreaks of public protests demanding political change. This political discontinuity has prevented the emergence of a stable and predictable environment in which to address the country’s problems. It also entrenched a power asymmetry between elected and unelected institutions. In recent years, this produced a hybrid model of informal power-sharing between the civilian government and the military. That arrangement has now been supplanted by military dominance.
A major contributor to present challenges has been the persistent reliance by both civilian and military governments on dysfunctional and unsustainable economic policies. Rather than mobilise domestic resources, successive governments turned to borrowing and bailouts to cover widening budget and balance-of-payments deficits — the root of chronic financial crises. The country’s foreign alignments ensured steady access to economic aid and external funds. This ‘borrowed growth’ might have worked if the fiscal space had been used to fix structural problems. It wasn’t.
Instead, external financing, combined with high remittances, allowed ruling elites to paper over those problems and avoid reform. The failure to raise adequate domestic resources together with low levels of savings and investment led to increased borrowing and higher debt. This resulted in an economy that lurches from one IMF tranche to the next. Today Pakistan is stuck in a low-growth, low-investment, high-debt equilibrium trap that clouds its economic future. But the power elite refuses to change course.
Governance challenges have also been compounded by the repercussions of protracted foreign engagements, the dynamics of great power competition, and the fault lines of regional geopolitics. An implacably hostile India, unresolved Kashmir dispute, and an unstable Afghanistan pushed security to the top of the national agenda. But this involved a strategic trade-off. Defence spending and objectives were prioritised at the expense of economic development, social services and broader policy goals.
Elite interests, flawed policies, failure to reform, chronic instability and the headwinds from geopolitical storms are all drivers of Pakistan’s governance crisis. It is not the number of provinces or the administrative architecture that are the source of the crisis. Improvements in provincial efficiency and delivery are certainly needed. But to justify altering the Constitution’s provincial framework using disingenuous arguments does no service to the country.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.
Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2026
