More ministries

In October of last year, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani proudly announced the abolition of 10 ministries. He framed the move as part of the government’s austerity agenda but in reality it was necessitated by the passage of the 18^th Amendment to the constitution, which devolved those subjects to the provinces. A year later, austerity has been shelved to conjure up more jobs for the boys. Four new ministries — those of inter-provincial coordination, national heritage and integration, food security and research and disaster management — have now been created. This is in addition to the three ministries Gilani set up in July. This government is yet to reach the heights of the Musharraf era, when there were over 50 ministries to satisfy cronies with a thirst for power but at this rate we may get there soon.

As a point of comparison, Pakistan has a cabinet that is more than double in number to that of the US. The obvious question that needs to be asked is if we can actually afford so many ministers. Each new ministry brings with it its own vast budget, a new bloated bureaucracy and the myriad expenses of a newly-minted minister. The parliamentarians who have been chosen to fill these positions were left without their offices after their previous ministries were devolved. It is not so much that these ministries needed creating as the fact that there were ministers-in-waiting who needed offices to occupy. What is equally galling is some of the ministerial choices. The food security and research ministry is being filled by Senator Israrullah Zehri, who lost the postal services ministry to the 18^th Amendment. Back in 2008, there were reports that three girls and their two mothers had been buried alive in Baba Kot apparently because the girls wanted to choose who they would marry themselves and their mothers agreed to that. This led to a lot of outrage, though Zehri just couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He defended the women being buried alive as a tradition in Balochistan and one that was applicable only to “immoral” women. That a wholly unnecessary new ministry has been created just to reward this man stings even more than Gilani’s decision to have these new ministries in the first place.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 28^th, 2011.