Decolonising our civil services

We must decolonise our bureaucracy from the colonial mindset, make it performance based and accountable.

Posh house in Islamabad, team of butlers, extensive list of cars and VIP access to almost every place in Pakistan, together with unaccountable power, is how one can describe Pakistan’s typical senior bureaucrat.

During the process of decolonisation, we failed to give up the foremost tools of colonisation, i.e, the bureaucratic structure that was put in place by the British Empire. We, despite 67 years of independence and being a Third World country, still carry the burden of maintaining a colonial bureaucracy that is crippling the nation down to its core. Colonial heritage engraved in the bureaucracy and the saabji/afser mentality is not just resulting in financial losses but also affecting the productivity and efficiency of the government. Our current financial status does not afford the luxury to maintain such a bureaucracy with standards that don’t exist even in the richest First World countries. We need an immediate civil services reform that not only changes the numbers and structures, but also decolonises the bureaucratic mindset and the entire narrative on what the bureaucracy entails.

The foremost thing that must be done is what Nadeemul Haque, ex-deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, has been advocating, which is to monetise all the perks and privileges. At the moment, the officers at the ministries are at war with one another over cars, house and staff, giving little or no attention to work — the preferences are clearly misdirected. To begin with, personal cars and housing should only be restricted for grade-20 and above, something which the previous government did try but failed miserably. Provision of lump-sum pay for people below grade-20 must be arranged so they can arrange their own housing, car, and living to free the government from office politics around these. At an average, every officer in a ministry has a staff of over four to five people, which is a huge waste of resources.

Moreover, at the moment, the idea of going into bureaucracy is largely driven by lust for “power” that can be abused and “status”, instead of a desire to genuinely serve the people. With this frame of mind, nothing positive can come out of government departments. A desperate change in the narrative is needed as part of the civil services reform.

We must also put an end to this miserable colonial style saab and afser culture at the government. Government officials are paid by the taxpayers’ money and hence the equation must change between the two groups. The colonial-style master-slave relation can’t continue anymore.

Next, and most important, we must have a performance-based bureaucratic structure where promotions are not based on seniority or political connection. At the moment, if you work 15 hours, or three hours, it has no impact on your promotion. If we could put in place a reward structure, or salary increments based on defined performance indicators, this could drastically change the performance of bureaucrats.

At the Ministry of Planning, Development & Reform, Ahsan Iqbal is actively working to change the promotion structure to a pyramid style, as it is in the military, so only the top performers are promoted to the top, and the rest all superseded.

Third, we must start the process of lateral/specialist hiring in the government in order to benefit from best practices of the private sector. Almost all developed countries are already doing this with great results. For technical positions, the government should, in fact, prefer people from the private sector or academia to enhance capacity and update systems. There are hundreds of people who have availed a foreign education and are returning back to Pakistan, or have done tremendously well in the international market. However, most of these people have little clue as to how to contribute to the government. There should be schemes and special hiring to utilise these people in a permanent way in the government so that we have more people like Umair Saif transforming the public sector.

Fourth, we need a clear line between politicians and bureaucrats in government work. If only we could follow the ideals of public administration as envisaged by Woodrow Wilson. Wilson argued for crystal-clear demarcation of roles/duties of the political leadership and the administration/bureaucracy. Our bureaucracy and political leadership, both, do not know where to draw the lines in terms of their respective roles. As a result, we see ministers interfering in the administrative affairs of a ministry and a secretary of ministry indulging in policymaking. Policy formulation is the domain of the political leadership and the bureaucracy/administration should only step in when they are asked to. A minister should provide the vision, while a secretary must implement that vision. Clear and defined roles of the two will allow both arms to function with efficacy and clarity.

Lastly, we cannot bring a substantive change in the bureaucratic set-up by investing huge sums of money or by creating systems unless we overhaul the entry point to the civil service, i.e., Central Superior Services (CSS) Exams. The exam systematically screens out intellectual people, and forwards those people who are good at rote learning of history, etc. Emphasis is laid on Victorian-style English, so many brilliant students every year are not able to clear the exam due to its strict English criteria. Why do we still have this as a gauge of intellect and performance in the government? The CSS must be revamped so as to bring out the best talent, intellectually and professionally. English should be one of the components, not the only component. My research from two years ago on civil services reform highlights how just a little change in the CSS can attract top talent. At the moment, the government puts off hundreds of people just by how the CSS exam is structured and conducted.

The bureaucracy is the backbone of success of any country. Politicians are only seasonal, but bureaucrats will stick for tenure of 30-35 years. Therefore, we must, at the earliest, decolonise our bureaucracy from the colonial mindset, make it performance based and accountable, so it not only delivers but also becomes a vehicle of innovation and initiatives.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2014.

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