Poor quality of governance and a show-piece democracy are the two main road blocks hindering national progress at grass roots levels. Despite all tall claims in media, the fruits of development have not been channeled to the masses that have an over-grown sense of complete alienation from the socio-economic process. This policy of segregation between the rulers and the ruled has fractured the national fabric of the society bringing adverse impact on productivity.
In this perspective, the need for reactivation of local government system has quadrupled so that lost hope may return to the hearts of voiceless segments of society. This is an age of partnerships and the ruling elite need to realise that they have to re-adjust their priorities to the tunes of public perceptions. Making ‘Air-borne’ policies is like building castles in the air in blatant disregard of ground realities. This mind-set is grossly unable to stem the rising tides of poverty, disease, illiteracy and chronic civic problems.
It is not a matter of coincidence that every elected government in Pakistan’s recent history has eliminated local bodies from district scenes, just to serve their hidden pursuits. Take the example of two major political parties which are always at daggers drawn on all vital issues. But surprising enough, both have a sharp convergence of opinion on one point; that the local government system rolled back since December 31, 2009 must continue to remain in the political deep freezer in order to get maximum gains during its forceful hibernation. PPP and PML-N, who are oceans apart on everything else, have a unity of thought that local government which is normally considered as the third tier of the federal and provincial set-ups must remain off-board so that they have free hand to fry their fish. Both parties want to scrap altogether the devolution of power formula that delegated authority to the crushed grass root layers of the society. One can imagine the impact of the simple strike of a pen that instantly killed 80,000 local bodies working in the country. Their authority was delegated to local district administrators. Instead of plugging the loops of the system through a process of improvements and reforms, they opted to throw the baby along with the bath water which was like shooting a patient to get rid of his sickness.
Wisdom demands that the issue of local government should be looked in the context of good governance and devolution of power to the grass root level only. All modern cities, especially mega cities like Karachi cannot be run for a single month if the local government system is abolished. If the big political parties call for elections for local government instead of appointing administrators and changing or maybe in Punjab, abrogating the whole system altogether, they will be doing themselves a favour. It is high time that people of Pakistan are given their true legitimate share in governance instead of a dust in the eyes by vested interests. In this saga running from devolution plan to dissolution order, bureaucracy enjoyed the wind fall profits as authority to run the local government was shifted from elected representatives to the city government officials. A deep sense of job uncertainty has made civil servants inherently insecure and insecure people do not perform well. What Indian Journalist Kuldip Nayyar wrote about the civil servants in India is also true about their colleagues in Pakistan as well. He wrote, “Public servants have invariably become an instrument in the hands of ministers. Ethical considerations inherent in public behaviour have become generally dim and in many cases beyond the mental grasp of many public functionaries. The desire for self preservation guides their actions and behaviour. Anxiety to survive at any cost is the crux of the approach to the problems before public servants. The Civil Service Academy where they are trained is an Ivory Tower. It is too elitist and too distant for the common man. It should be obligatory for the trainees to work with NGOs at the grassroot level. They may learn, if not imbibe, the qualities of humility which officials lack”. It is unfortunate on the part of bureaucracy that patronage and loyalty to the ruling classes have replaced merit, competence and selfless service to the public.
The most oft criticism of economic strategy is that the benefits of growth have not been broadly shared and disparities between the top income and low income groups are widening. Both these points are valid and need to be understood and addressed in a dispassionate, unbiased and cool manner. We are very good at identifying and diagnosing our problems but very poor in implementing the required actions. It is time to come out of debating hall and turn words into actions and projects on paper into realities. It is an objective fact that Pakistan’s problems of governance don’t require as much unknown remedies as they do political will to initiate bold reforms. But the question is that who will bell the cat? People must be empowered to pursue the path of development that will surely remove the widening income disparities. It is always the people who know their problems and solutions much more and much better than anybody else. Empowering the local government is, in fact, empowering the people.
