Pakistan's new administrative reform: What is the effectiveness?
The Carnatic Wars that began in the 1740s and then the Battle of Plassey in 1757 completely transformed the British East India Company and now it became a tool for political dissemination of Britain. Along with the spread of political power over India, new measures were taken to strengthen the administration in which the Indian Civil Service or ICS was the most important. During the 19th and 20th centuries colonial administrators developed powerful and highly centralized bureaucratic institutions administered by this Indian Civil Service to rule the empire. While representative institutions were gradually introduced into colonial India, it was also intended to be used as a safety valve, as Sir Henry Bartle Frere used to say. The role of these weakly elected bodies was to act as advisors rather than policy-making bodies, and their utility was more for dealing with local administrative matters than for dealing with core policy issues. These were not democratic institutions that transferred power to elected representatives but rather were designed to help legitimize and strengthen bureaucratic authority over the state. The widespread imbalance of power between the very strong bureaucratic institutions inherited from colonial India in Pakistan as a result of Partition, and the continuously weakened representative and democratic institutions after independence has been one of the biggest causes of political instability in Pakistan.Today, the inefficiency of the bureaucracy and its political bosses, the over-politicization of administration, and the non-availability of state institutions due to corruption are hurting the economic, social, and political development of Pakistan. The failure of the state to provide welfare and protection to its citizens, inadequate social services, and lack of rule of law is eroding the legitimacy and stability of the state.
And from time to time, some efforts have been made to remove these deficiencies in administration. From 1947 to 1971, the bureaucracy played a major role in the policy-making of Pakistan and elected leaders had little control and influence over it.
Administrative reforms designed in 1973 were brought by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who came to power after the break-up of Pakistan in 1971. It made efforts to weaken the elite CSP cadre and to increase political influence and control over the powerful bureaucracy, which resulted in the politicization of the civil service.
Bhutto removed the protection of civil services in the 1973 constitution in order to weaken its power, as did his successor Zia. Pervez Musharraf even tried to make it directly subordinate to the military network by appointing senior military officers in civil administration. Now selected by the army, Prime Minister Imran Khan has brought a new version of reforms.
What is in the reforms?
On Wednesday, Pakistan's Federal Education and Vocational Training Minister Shafqat Mahmood, who is also the head of the Cabinet Committee on Constitutional Reforms, announced major reforms in Pakistan's civil service aimed at improving governance. According to the outline of these reforms, the main areas of reforms, Civil Servant Promotion (BS-18 to BS-21) Rules, 2019, Civil Servant (Directly Retirement from Service) Rules, 2020, Efficiency and Discipline Rule, 2020, Revised MP Scale Policy, 2020, Rotation Policy, 2020 and Rationalization of cadre strength — induction in PAS.
Emphasizing the need for reforms, Mahmud said that a major problem in promotion in the civil service was confusion about who has the authority to promote? And now for the first time, employer authorities are clearly defined. In addition, a clear rule was made regarding promotions that officers who were pending an investigation at the Federal Investigation Agency or the National Accountability Bureau would not be promoted and their promotion would be deferred until the investigation against them finished. Along with this, there is a clear reference to the procedure of retirement of a civil servant before the term ends. He said that it is now defined who has the right to retire civil servants. According to the federal minister, the chairman of the Federal Public Service Commission will have the authority to retire BS-20 and above, while the secretary for grades BS-17 to BS-19 and Senior Joint Secretary for BS-16 and below will be the competent authority to provide retirement. These new reforms claim to have completely changed the recruitment mechanism. Permission has been given to recruit by advertisements for Management Professions (MPs). In these new reforms, major claims have been made regarding the improvement in the rotation policy.
It is noteworthy that two services, the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and the Pakistan Police Service, which both are allowed to operate in both the center and the provinces. They either choose to work for 10 to 15 years in the provinces and some join center also. Now the new policy has been prepared in which rotation has been added with promotion. According to this, if an officer gives preference to stay in any province, then he will be denied the opportunity of promotion in BS-21. Now the maximum period of stay in a state has been fixed at 10 years. It is an important fact that the purpose of reforms has also been stated in this draft. The purpose of this exercise is also to reduce the strength of the administrative services of Pakistan. This will increase the opportunities for other services and enable them to become empowered.
Nature of reforms
While the government is calling it a revolutionary step, critics believe that there is nothing new in all these reforms. Most of the major measures announced by the government to prevent promotions and take punitive action against delinquent civil servants were part of the laws introduced by former military ruler Retired General Pervez. On 12 October 1999, after the overthrow of the elected government of the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, General Musharraf issued the Removal of Service (Special Powers) Ordinance 2000 on 27 May 2000, easing the way for the dismissal of incompetent officers by the competent authority. The concept of the investigation against a civil servant through competent authority has also been introduced in the past. But the Imran Khan government has set a time limit of 105 days to end this investigation. But Pakistan has no tradition to care about deadlines. Such time limits also provide some other laws such as - the Anti-Terrorism Act asks the Anti-Terrorism Court to conclude the trial in a few weeks and the National Accountability Ordinance sets a 30-day deadline to conclude a lawsuit. But it is noteworthy that none of these hearings ends in the stipulated time frame. Some other similar provisions have been introduced with some amendments, which do not even have the vision to bring about any innovation or fundamental change. Experts of reforms are treating it as old wine in a new bottle.
In the newly changed scenario, after the end of the First World War, British Prime Minister Lloyd George called the Indian Civil Service the steel frame of the empire. Whose major task was to keep this most prominent colony of the British Empire firmly attached with them. But today, after more than seven decades of independence, Pakistan following the British colonial tradition, the bureaucratic institutions of Pakistan remain stronger than their democratic ones. The state of democracy in Pakistan has still not been strengthened, with the result that the executive power of governance is mainly controlled directly or indirectly by civilian and military bureaucrats, In this situation it becomes necessary that the power of such a tyrannical part of governance be limited and reasonable restrictions should be imposed on it. But the misfortune of democracy in Pakistan is that it is completely dependent on military and civil bureaucracy. Mismanagement, political manipulation, and corruption have made Pakistan's civil service unable to provide effective administration and basic public services. The people of Pakistan see civil servants as irresponsible and corrupt and exploitative. The bureaucratic laxity and inefficiency not only weakens governance but also provides opportunities for the army and extremists to destabilize the state. Therefore, at this time Pakistan needs real reforms and not farce in the name of reforms.