Karachi skyline. PHOTO: REUTERS
Anyone who has been in public service will attest to that! In order to have an impact, you generally have to go against the system. Very few are brave enough to do that.
Before sharing our ideas for improving governance, we will discuss weaknesses of the current system.
So what are the constraints to serving citizens who live in remote villages, who survive in urban slums, who lack sanitation, clean water and basic nutrition? And what are the structural changes needed to ensure that public expenditure positively impacts the lives of those who need it the most?
More than incompetence and corruption, the bigger issue is incentives, decision-making process and accountability. Don’t get us wrong, we have “accountability”, we spend tremendous energy on “process accountability”. From PC-1s to PPRA rules to NAB to the Auditor General, everyone is working hard to ensure not a rupee is stolen.
But what about impact? What about improving lives? What about progress?
Since the impact is relative, we talk about it, but we don’t measure it. Even when we measure it, incentives are not aligned with our measures of progress. It is also easier for a public servant to wed himself/herself to the process and as long as he/she is following the rules, no one can hold him/her accountable for the lack of impact. You may have heard of many public servants being held accountable for violating processes, but no one is questioned about the impact of his/her work.
Thus, the key weakness of the current governance system in the country is the lack of focus on impact and alignment of incentives and accountability to impact assessment.
Indeed, there is a need to devise a new governance framework in order to improve lives of people at large and to hold accountable those who are responsible to do it.
The cornerstone of the new framework should be proximity and autonomy. The person closest to the citizen should have maximum incentive and authority to serve his needs. There is a need to pay attention to the concept of “street-level bureaucracy”.
Pakistan a big country
The first thing to understand is that Pakistan is a big country. Five Nordic countries - with some of the highest living standards - have a combined population of 27 million. That’s nearly the same as that in Karachi – Pakistan’s largest urban conglomeration.
Each one of them has a parliament, a prime minister and so on. What about Karachi? It doesn’t even have an effective city government with the autonomy to manage local challenges.
In terms of land, Pakistan is equal to the land area of Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. With such a wide land area, we need to rethink how we run Pakistan. Otherwise, good intentions and honest leadership will never deliver - not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t.
Because of the centraliasation of power in provincial capitals and Islamabad (the opposite of proximity), we are facing a double hurdle to development. People in a position to make decisions lack the information and local understanding to make a difference.
On the other hand, those who have this information and understanding face capacity constraints and have little influence on resource allocation and planning. This is a recipe for ongoing disaster, which we see in our everyday experience of governance.
Even at the local level, provincial and federal governments see citizen empowerment as a threat to their dominance. This attitude is a legacy of the colonial past where the purpose of the government was to maintain order and extract resources. Unfortunately, we are depending on the same governance structure to improve lives in a free Pakistan.
Where do we go from here?
First, we need to commit to an urban-centered development model. That means the focus of the entire effort should be on designing and building 50-plus cities that are welcoming, liveable, sustainable and globally competitive.
Second, we have to give these cities autonomy in managing their local challenges. That requires trust in empowered citizens. We have to stop using bureaucracy as an instrument of power of provincial and federal governments. Let the city be run by a directly elected mayor answerable to a locally elected city council.
Third, we need to not only decentralise government spending by transferring resources to cities, we must shift the responsibility of tax collection on land and some services to local governments. True empowerment cannot happen unless city governments have their own sources of revenues. Fourth, the city mayor and council should be autonomous in the appointment of city managers/planners and development officers for serving the people.
After the separation of judicial and police functions from the offices of deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners, these offices have become redundant. We need to rethink the model of appointing deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners, inherited from the British colonial regime. We need professionalised human resources capable of designing and managing cities. Most of such officers are posted in cities they have never even visited before and then one fine morning they are transferred to another place. In today’s complex urban management, this model needs to be revisited.
Because of this new level of proximity to the government, these urban centres will become thriving cities not only economically, but also culturally and politically. As citizens feel engaged and connected, they will demand better governance from their easily accessible representatives.
With a 50-plus rapidly progressing energetic cities, rural population will have options. They can migrate to Karachi or Islamabad, but they can also migrate to Larkana, Sahiwal and Nowshera. With power distributed to so many centres of citizenship, we can then hope to build our Samarkand and Bukhara.
And what is required from the federal and provincial governments? Let go of undue powers and trust your citizens, they will surprise you with their ingenuity, passion and perseverance.
Shahjahan Chaudhary is Director at the National Incubation Centre Karachi
Naveed Iftikhar is a public policy adviser and research fellow having interest in public-sector governance, cities and entrepreneurship
Published in The Express Tribune, October 22nd, 2018.
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