Departmental heist

The adage ‘The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the society’ holds timeless relevance in our society. Despite a vast number of laws, a carefully cultivated system of lawlessness and its devastating consequences hold sway over the lives and destinies of citizens. This system of lawlessness enriches its architects, undermining the very laws and Constitution that should protect society.

The deliberate laxity in the implementation of earlier laws prompts the parasitic status quo to compensate for the enforcement gap through more legislation. Furthermore, such a vast amount of legislation often includes loopholes or carve-outs that allow those in power to avoid accountability for mismanagement.

The same holds true for the proliferation of departments in our country. Despite their worthlessness, the laws still serve the status quo in such a manner that their enforcement ploy demands creating more departments and adding more stakes to extract more public funds. That is, the multitude of departments suggests the incompetence, or more appropriately, the unwillingness of their operators to deliver on their constitutional and legally assigned objectives.

Lal Jan Khattak, a jurist and retired judge of the Peshawar High Court, sees departmental proliferation as a major impediment to national development. “The size of our governments, either federal or provincial, is too large. At the time of [the] partition, there were fewer departments in our province, which now number about three dozen. This proliferation of departments is consuming a significant portion of our resources. Unless we reduce the size of the government, we will not make headway as a country,” he says.

Why does the state focus more on creating more laws and departments than implementing the existing ones and enhancing their efficiency? Despite their democratic, self-righteous and compassionate facade that the forces of the chronic status quo have concealed themselves behind for decades, they rarely possess a sense of pity for the people, let alone altruism. Had it been otherwise, the country and its people would not have been struggling amidst chaos. What they have been and are up to is fortifying their parasitic clutches.

This manifested, among other things, in paradoxical practices. For instance, the watchdogs of corruption indulge in practices perhaps more than the most corrupt. The country’s judiciary obstructs justice more than dispensing it. Similarly, the executive hampers the implementation of laws more than it implements them. The clergy misguides and divides the masses more than guiding and uniting them. The media manipulates and distorts truth rather than displaying it.

As most stakeholders have questionable and tainted pasts, creating new departments could be seen as a means to absorb potential dissenters or those who might threaten the existing heist. In order to silence dissenting voices against plunder, the status quo collaborates with them, absorbs them, and ultimately transforms them into beneficiaries of the system.

Moreover, the proliferation of departments and ministries increases the number of positions to be filled, potentially leading to more opportunities for corruption. This is because more departments often mean more ministers, bureaucrats, and accomplices in loot and plunder. The multitude of officials appointed through favoritism, nepotism and connections with well-established records of incompetence and corruption sustain the status quo at the expense of the country’s prospects for prosperity.

Downsizing the departments would be a step in the right direction. The departments of food, agriculture and irrigation could be managed by one secretary instead of three. Similarly, the departments of higher education, secondary education and technical education could also be managed by a single secretary. However, downsizing alone would not suffice unless structural and functional reforms of the remaining merged departments at the grassroots level are carried out. Otherwise, the remaining departments would end up doubling down on their heists.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2024.

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