Today, bureaucrats simply sign documents brought by local people where they are deputed instead of addressing issues
HUB: This refers to the article “All problems are local” by Rasul Bakhsh Rais published in The Express Tribune on February 4.
As far as local problems such as poorly maintained roads, deteriorating health facilities and 14-foot open manholes, which adversely affect lives of the people are concerned, one thing must be kept in mind that such problems do not add or take away from democracy. Democracy is redemption from all these bothersome issues.
An effective step towards addressing these local issues was the devolution of power from the higher levels to the grassroots level undertaken by former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, who rightly pointed out flaws in our bureaucracy. As he said, while announcing the local government system, “Our existing administrative system is based on a colonial structure of control or rule rather than serve.” Despite this warning, all the lawmaking exercises in Pakistan today are based on superficial aspects of public life. There is little headway on the front of local governance because it clearly does not serve the bureaucratic set-up at it exists now.
Today, bureaucrats simply sign documents brought by local people where they are deputed instead of addressing issues. In fact, the core problem rests with our governing system which can, at best, be considered as an inverted pyramid style of governance. In journalistic terms, the ‘inverted pyramid’ means to write from bottom to top; the same pattern is pursued by our governing elite where intellectuals are kept at the bottom and our cunning politicians, who may deserve to be pushed to the bottom because they do politics ‘with’ people, not ‘for’ the people, are on top.
To make our beloved Pakistan prosperous and a developed country as well as a land free of all deep-rooted evils, the inverted pyramid style of governing will have to be reversed in order to bring intellectuals to the top. The bureaucrats need to realise that they are part of the civil ‘service’, the aim of which is to provide services to the people. Entrapping local problems into the bottlenecks of needless logistical processes is a great disservice to the masses.
Ayaz Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, February 8th, 2015.
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