The case for effective local government

The importance of local bodies as the third tier of governance cannot be over-emphasised.

The order to extend the date of local bodies elections in the country has been welcomed across the board. The Supreme Court’s timely order has removed a pale of uncertainty, giving key players time to line up necessary arrangements for holding free and fair elections. These elections will be watched with keen interest as they are being held on party basis in line with the amended Article 140-A of the Constitution, which gives leeway to political parties to field their candidates and dig in their heels at the grassroots level. The new constitutional dispensation envisages political empowerment of local body institutions in tandem with administrative and financial authorities and responsibilities. This is certainly an improvement on the erstwhile provisions prevalent in the country although it still lags behind those placed in India, where the local government system works as a third tier of governance and has been given constitutional status. The 73rd amendment of the Indian Constitution has not only made local bodies, known as Panchayat Raj institutions, a constitutional entity but certain mandatory functions and the tax base for the Panchayat Raj have also been stipulated in one of the schedules of the Constitution.

The importance of local bodies as the third tier of governance, the first two tiers being the central and provincial governments, cannot be over-emphasised. These are known as rallying points for identifying pressing spatial needs and a leverage to mobilise human and ancillary resources to hammer out situation-specific solutions. Devolution, as a critical process, signifies administrative and financial empowerment with a degree of autonomy in decision-making. The participatory mechanism that is spawned out through an electoral process helps arrive at decisions in this regard.

Provincial governments, which have a constitutional mandate to provide legislative cover to these institutions, have yet another role to play — that of oversight to make sure that the institutions are working in line with the intent of the law and the broad policy framework set out in this regard. National governments assisted by the provincial governments continue to play the strategic functions of economic stabilisation and redistribution, with a view to make development more inclusive. Vast territorial domains and scattered swathes of population require well-informed responses to meet local needs. In this scenario, devolved structures keep raising the demand for more financial and administrative powers with a control over these resources.

The history of local bodies in the country offers interesting details. The centrality of the district has been key to the growth of both the administrative machinery and local government institutions. Actionable decisions regarding maintenance of law and order, land management, revenue collection and service delivery were taken at this level. Local government institutions were made coterminous with the administrative hierarchy in the district. These institutions, however, did not show much corresponding development. Over a period of time, piecemeal developments were made in the provinces to enable the local bodies to play a commensurate role. After independence, enactments in this regard were a continuation of British times, drawn from the 1919 Act, when local government as a subject was transferred to the provinces. Business processes remained the same through different governments, especially the military governments, which gave different spins to their structures, composition and regularity frameworks.

The year 1959 was a watershed in the history of these institutions when President Ayub Khan introduced the Basic Democracy system. It was an integrated four-tier hierarchical system of governance from the union council to the divisional council level, which was organically linked with the administrative structures of the country. The union councils and the district councils were dovetailed with the ongoing development processes. The primacy of these institutions during military regimes reflected the ever-evolving dynamics of civil-military relations, as this third tier assumed special significance as a flagship of these regimes at the expense of the first two tiers. This also helps us understand the ambivalence of civilian rulers to the representative character of these institutions.

The local government system that was introduced in 1979 during General Ziaul Haq’s rule not only eased bureaucratic controls over these institutions but formalised their developmental role. The district council was assigned the responsibility of prioritising schemes regarding primary health and education facilities, rural electrification, water supply schemes and the construction of farm-to-market roads. The district coordination committee was put in place, which was headed by the chairman of the district council, with the deputy commissioner as the coordinator.

In 2001, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf introduced the concept of the district government through a transformative move, which not only abolished the office of the deputy commissioner but also assigned primacy to the district Nazim by putting a dozen provincial departments under his command. Regulatory functions, including performance evaluation of revenue judicial officers, were entrusted to the Nazim without realising the factionalised nature of rural local politics, which palpably compromised the justiciable dispensation at the district level. The move, however, envisaged enormous administrative and financial empowerment of these institutions, which exposed their brittle capacity to absorb high dozes of resources.

A question is often raised as to the reason behind military rulers having relied more on these institutions. The answer is not difficult to find. The quest for legitimacy was the driving force in this generous patronage. The system identified local power holders and brought them into the system of governance, laying the basis for military regimes to stall political activity at the higher tiers. Independent party politics did not fit into their agenda. During Musharraf's time, for instance, even a minor change in the law was kept beyond the pale of provincial governments, which were the main stakeholders and constitutional guardians of the system. He centralised an otherwise decentralised law and put it in the fourth schedule of the Constitution.

The system spawned during three prolonged military interventions indicated one thing — when the crunch came, it could hardly absorb the pressure generated by political and social forces. With the exit of the architects of these systems, they faded away for lack of ownership. The grim fact of our political history is that only those interventions have survived the test of time, which had an endurable sense of ownership.

This brings us close to the fact that local government in its right perspective is an effective means of empowerment at the grassroots level. There are, however, participatory constraints which may continue to elude the goal of inclusive development. Social stratification, 'dharraybandi', factionalism and patronage are the key pullers of constituency-driven politics. The effects of these are felt more keenly at the local level as small units sharpen the edges of these elements. Increasing participation through devolved institutions may well shift the locus of power without creating space for a real distribution of power within the community. This may require broadening the political base on a continuous basis. Local bodies elections on a party basis, giving a formal role to political parties, may well help in rounding the skewed edges of local politics.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2013.

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