Putting people first

Cockroaches, real or imagined, have shaken up the system. It is about time. Better stitch in time to save some than none. The debate, though, has lost its direction. Smaller units are a separate need, and transformed – not better alone – governance is an imperative. Both have different reasons. Simply put, drastically improved governance is to keep the cockroaches at bay, while smaller administrative units are essential to keep the integrity of the federation in place. I will explain.

Governance is empathy, policy, priority, mechanism, accountability, and attitude – all woven together in the person and the system that he looks over for the benefit of both the people and the state. In governance, those responsible serve, not rule. This distinction is critical in the mind and in the approach and attitude of those chosen to serve society. Without it, no mechanism, no administrative unit, or no structural adjustment will keep the cockroaches from walking all over. With the present lot of bureaucrats, or the politicos in power, it is an impossible ask. It is just too much of an extra chip they carry on their shoulders. Or the power in their seats. They will not and cannot transform. Politicians may be unavoidable, but those who have been around for a long time or have joined after seeing the ones around for a long time must be exchanged for another kind.

By the looks of how the board has been set up, all favour tilts in one direction only – to the political class. And these are famously around the five hundred or so families which traditionally provide the 1142 members in the five legislatures. The third tier, the local bodies, remain woefully empty. For a long time now, political professionals in the provinces have successfully thwarted any attempt to institute the third tier, or to do so in the spirit envisaged in the dreaded Constitution. Hence, no newcomer can enter politics unless he is from that class or from among the converted. Why would the powerful hand over both the authority and the autonomy to anyone from the lower echelons? So the delegation of authority and control of money remains stunted and captured by those who mind the provinces for their political masters. Various permutations only fill the vacancy. Democracy is no more of the people, for the people, and by the people; instead, it is of the elites, for the elites, by the elites. This equation needs to be changed.

Perhaps, the local bodies elections, over time, will help throw up fresh faces. They will be necessarily more reachable, from the local lot, and answerable to their constituents. That may inculcate in them the spirit of listening and responding to the needs of the common man who currently lives in a vacuum with zero access or connection to those who sit on top in their name. This has disconnected the people from the state, creating a fearful emptiness that is already being exploited by the criminals and by those who mean harm to the nexus in the nation-state. That is when cockroaches sneak out and overwhelm.

Constitutional provisions must be altered to keep a fixed tenure of the local governments, which may never be dismissed under any authority. Bureaucracy attached to local bodies at their level must be subservient to the elected members at the Union, District, Municipal and Mayoral levels. Strict financial autonomy and constant accountability must be built in to ensure the resources are used for the common good and not frittered away at any level. Schools, roads, clean drinking water, basic health, cleanliness and hygienic living should be essentially delegated at this level. Those who compete for grassroots responsibility must undergo mandatory administrative and fiscal training to function effectively in those positions. A lot more can be gleaned from the large array of options available the world over to turn the system truly transformative.

Structural changes, or smaller provinces, or administrative units with functional independence, are all the means to assist governance and to connect people with the state in a more direct way. In real terms, it is also to help govern a country of rapidly growing population, and big enough, area-wise, to be the 33rd largest in the world. It needs more hands-on, efficient mechanisms to establish the writ of the state and the government through close, proximate presence among the people, rather than being ruled from distant capitals. Balochistan is a prime example where it is impossible to reach its vast regions in any expeditious manner. Pakistan's ongoing challenge against terrorism emerges from these empty spaces that remain uncovered by governmental presence of any kind. Cockroaches of the deadlier kind rule the roost.

The same case can be made for Punjab, where a province of over 133 million is run from its capital. The distribution of resources and the distance of its remote corners from this political stronghold are far too much, with large swathes of population waiting for their share of the morsel. It never gets there, or they remain woefully neglected and are lost in the haze of inattention augmented by distance. Cockroaches like unattended spaces.

This only weakens the federation and its integrity. Large provinces give rise to parochialist nationalism around identity, which is a growing anathema to a nation already weakened by absent or poor governance. The political overlords of these large provinces have assumed total control over these regions and populations through decades of unchallenged political and social dominance. They use this to great effect to reinforce their respective criticality to the state's integrity. And perpetuate their control, which passes on from one generation to the next. Democracy to them is a foil. While the people remain shunned to their dismalness, the strong and the overlords rule in their name. I like the formulation, 'when the roof on top and the ground below is not yours, how can the vote be yours?' Our sham of democracy is built around this unfortunate and painful existential reality on a pervasive scale. People are reduced to being serfs while dynasties rule over them.

Democracy, which in reality is no more, remains badly tarnished and disrespected. To recover its morality and its spirit, and to break the stranglehold of the dynastic overlords, a country-wide uniform local bodies electoral and functional system, secured from any interference through constitutional provisions, and a restructuring of the state into smaller units is imperative. Bringing the government closer to the people; breaking the hold of the few over power; and returning ownership of democracy to the people are the only ways the nation will remain viable and keep the demons out. Currently, the demons have us in their grip.