THE three-in-one devolution plan under the Local Government Ordinance 2001 needs to be disassembled since it seeks to bring into its fold three unrelated issues, each of which has a different set of guiding principles.

If the objective is devolving more power and functions to local councils, it is perfectly possible — even preferable, looking at established practices worldwide — to bring about incremental improvements in the existing local councils from divisional and district to the union levels.

Increasing local councils’ power does not require administrative gerrymandering and the creation of such irrational anomalies as one district comprising one-third of the population of Sindh with another district with less than half a million people.

The LGO 2001, it seems, was meant to kill three birds with one stone. Not satisfied with merely devolving more power to local councils, it also embarked upon the ambitious project of elevating district ‘government’ to become a parallel centre of power in competition with the provincial governments.

Also, since the district is the basic unit for the delimitation of constituencies, such gerrymandering pre-empted the task of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) by predetermining electoral constituencies within one-third of the province under the garb of the devolution plan.

Under one nomenclature or the other, elected local councils have been working in Pakistan since its inception with varying powers and functions. As elsewhere in the world, different political parties have also contested elections here and won or lost seats — some more than others and some more at one time than the other. Never before, though, had the LGO 2001 sort of gerrymandering been attempted.

The functioning of local government entities under the LGO 2001 has generated serious flaws that need to be rectified. In Sindh alone, where 60 per cent of the provincial budget is spent through local governments, nearly 200 audit paragraphs identifying financial irregularities and corruption in these entities were reportedly prepared.

But under one pretext or the other, they have not been submitted to the Public Accounts Committee for scrutiny and accountability. By exempting local councils from accountability for public funds, are we strengthening grassroots democracy or sounding its death knell?

Enough evidence has been collected by the media to show that pushing the state and its functionaries away from their fundamental duties of maintaining public peace and enforcing the law has opened space for a wave of economic crimes such as grabbing state land, extortion from businesses and creating private fiefdoms on public funds.

These are real issues affecting the integrity of governance, and their continuing neglect will cause serious damage to the democratic dispensation as well as to the state and society in which we live. Balancing the duties and functions of different state institutions and evolving a durable system of local government will be another test for those who are responsible for protecting the state and society as well as grass-roots democracy from further damage.

The administrative units of divisions, districts and other smaller cells is a function of the executive and is determined —– where need be — by the principles of good governance, neutrality of administration, proximity to decision-making and service-delivery to people.

The blatant gerrymandering of districts in the name of devolution has already cast serious doubts on the LGO 2001; the only sensible thing would be for all stakeholders to disown such exploitation of each other and go back to the administrative and local council structures that existed before the atmosphere was vitiated by the mischief embedded in Pervez Musharraf’s devolution plan.

The five districts that already existed in Karachi, which also had supporting infrastructure in terms of courts and other offices for ease of access for people, should continue to provide stability and continuity.

As the population increases and supporting infrastructure is provided, new districts would then need to be added to provide the with people easy access to decision-making.

In developed countries such as the US, as population rates and development expand, new towns or districts are incorporated and separately managed by their own elected bodies rather than amalgamated into a single urban conglomerate.

The delimitation of constituencies is never entrusted to the executive but falls within the mandate of the independent ECP. The executive, political parties and others may make suggestions they think appropriate, but decision-making is entirely the privilege of the ECP.

And although districts are taken as the basic unit within which constituencies are delimited, the ECP decides upon the issues under its guidelines of population and fair and contiguous areas to form balanced constituencies.

Additionally, for the unity and stability of Pakistan, the exercise of delimitation should avoid exclusivity of constituencies on the basis of sectarian, ethnic or biradari enclaves as that breeds intolerance and extremist tendencies. The self-interest of election candidates should be linked to require cooperation and support from groups other than their own to ensure peaceful and harmonious relations among communities.

Everywhere in the world, the guiding principles for long-term and sustainable peace and stability are fairness in dealings with each other and keeping from resorting to exploitative mechanisms.

Therefore, de-linking the gerrymandering of districts and the pre-emption of the ECP mandate would help everyone focus on the real issue of creating a responsible and durable system of a grass-roots democracy and protecting the state from erosion.

The mischief, which was discarded without another thought in other provinces, has already caused Sindh to suffer severe damage to the lives and properties of ordinary people; it should similarly be discarded.

There is more to the life of people than constant bickering over the spoils of vested-interest politics. The people of the province — indeed, of the country — desperately need peace and stability to get on with the increasing challenges of their wretched day-to-day living.

The writer designed the Board of Investment and First Women Bank. smshah@alum.mit.edu