Rightsizing desired

Downsizing the government and cutting down on expenses are essential for ensuring good governance. It goes without saying that we, as a nation, are living beyond our means, and successive governments have only paid lip service to austerity. A Senate Subcommittee on Devolution has flagged two important aspects: first, around Rs6 trillion annually is being wasted on irrelevant ministries and state bodies; and second, the 18th Constitutional Amendment is not being implemented in letter and spirit. This is more than enough to kick-start a debate on the lacunae inherent in our system and how the financial bleeding can be stopped.

While listing out their recommendations, the panel of senators pointed out that the defunct concurrent list is still in vogue and Article 154 of the Constitution is being undermined - an issue that demands immediate rectification. They also called for reconstituting the CCI "on the basis of equality of provinces", and barred the federal government from privatising power distribution companies, arguing it is a provincial subject. An interesting observation was that the federation must limit itself to nine ministries with an official budget of Rs3.3 trillion. Likewise, the subjects in the Federal Legislative List Part-II must be decided by the CCI rather than the federal cabinet.

All this entails that Pakistan has burdensome ministries and an unproductive bureaucracy, eating up around Rs8 trillion annually out of a cash-constrained revenue generation apparatus of Rs15 trillion. It is worth noting that our ministries cater to 1.92 million federal employees, apart from a million provincial servants. That is why it had also been recommended earlier that the abolition and relocation of 65 departments would be a first step in the right direction. These observations, incidentally, have come at a time when a debate is underway on creating new provinces. All this necessitates some audacious scrutiny of the system at work, with the implicit understanding that the governance organogram must be remapped. Only then will we be able to alleviate the mounting debt burden and win back the trust of our constituents.