MANY years ago, a senior official of a multilateral development bank delivered a harsh indictment of Pakistan’s state of affairs: it is a seriously large country run by a succession of non-serious policymaking elite. While the setting for the delivery of this critique was an informal one, it left one pondering its accuracy. Sadly, Pakistan’s ruling elites, irrespective of the political flag they bear, regularly try and prove the gentleman right. The recent spate of political statements on the creation of new provinces serves as an example.
Administrative boundaries are not sacrosanct and must be viewed as mechanisms designed to serve evolving and defined public interest. Speaking about the creation of new provinces is not, therefore, tantamount to a conspiracy. Rather it reflects a healthy approach to reassessing their utility and viability.
That said, restructuring a federation is not a trifling matter as its implications run deep and wide — from the obvious fiscal imperatives and changes to the balance of political representation, to the everyday impact on public service delivery and on the lives of citizens. Hasty, discordant political sound bites cannot, therefore, be a substitute for rigorous, extensive, and inclusive deliberation and analysis.
The experience of other nations in this respect, including several where the author has had the privilege of leading the process, is instructive. There are two common strands of note.
First, there is no single model to follow and changes are rooted in legal, political, and economic contexts. Second, political motives aside, each effort identified specific problems that the change was intended to solve.
India’s establishment of Telangana was characterised by strong institutional arrangements, and extensive public engagement over an 11-month period. Brazil’s division of Goiás to form Tocantins responded to a long-standing public movement and leveraged constitutionally mandated plebiscitary mechanisms for public consent. In Russia, consolidation rather than fragmentation served as the principle for establishing the Zabaykalsky Krai region, with improved living standards being a clearly defined objective. Accelerating socioeconomic development was also the raison d’être for Timor-Leste’s establishment of the world’s newest Special Administrative Region in Oé-Cusse.
From these and other global experiences, one can distill several insights and lessons for Pakistan.
Lesson 1: Never treat the issue of creating new regions as merely redrawing the map. This reductive approach will upend any potential benefits that might accrue from a careful and considered process of reviewing how government is structured. The era of arbitrary, extractive cartography — for example, the Radcliffe Line, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company — is dead and should stay that way. Pakistan should frame the issue of new provinces not as a form of territorial re-engineering but as a fundamental state reform aimed at reducing inequality, democratising economic and developmental opportunities, and improving public services.
Lesson 2: Defined public interest, as opposed to political ambition or the facilitation of vested interests, should be the principal driver for change. Deep and genuine engagement with the public, not just their representatives, must constitute the starting point, not the finish line, and be non-negotiable. Furthermore, a distinction must be made between public need — the genuine reasons which justify change — and public demand — which can be easily manufactured through weaponising algorithms and orchestrated street power. The stronger the mechanisms for filtering out political noise and faux narratives, the greater the likelihood of neutralising proxy gerrymandering on public opinion.
Administrative boundaries are not sacrosanct and must be viewed as mechanisms designed to serve evolving and defined public interest.
Lesson 3:There needs to be absolute clarity on the purpose of the proposed changes, an agreement on the precise problems the changes set out to resolve, and complete transparency on plans. Vague, stylised assertions around improving governance and service delivery, and absence of transparency on both purpose and process, will only serve as a petridish for political and social discontent and extended, simmering disputes.
Three other insights, peculiar to Pakistan’s context are important to highlight: first, the functionalisation and empowerment of local governments must be embedded within the debate on new provinces, as these are not mutually exclusive discussions.
Second, it is necessary to look under the hood of how provinces themselves create administrative units, based as they are on administrative fiat rather than legislative approval — otherwise, we risk repeating the mistake made under the 18th Amendment’s Article 140-A, which left it to the provinces to establish independent local governments (they didn’t).
Third, rejigging old solutions wrapped inside tired narratives and tactics (administrative fiat, holding illegal/ mala fide referendums, relying heavily on ethno-linguistic nationalism as a criterion) will be unfortunate.
To move forward, a three-step roadmap is proposed:
1: Establish a ‘Commission for Citizen-Centric Change’ as a multi-stakeholder, cross-party, independent, and empowered institutional arrangement to lead the process. As part of its work, it should be tasked with extensive public engagement, and the conduct of technical analysis to determine criteria, weigh options, and ensure transparency and knowledge management.
2: Institute a three-dimensional ‘Public Interest Test’ framework that includes an assessment of the public benefits and whether they meet citizen aspirations and socioeconomic needs; a fiscal viability review to determine financial and economic sustainability; and an institutional readiness mapping to measure state capabilities and agility.
3: Test this framework and institutional arrangements by targeting one province. Punjab is the most obvious case for review given its size and the ongoing debate on a south Punjab province. It should be used as a policy lab. Results emerging from this lab should inform a nationwide scaling.Indeed, it is time to get serious.
The writer is a former adviser to the chair of the G77 and China.
Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2026
