The chief manager of Punjab

Charms of technocracy will lead nowhere

 

“Abraham Zaleznik in his article, “Managers and Leaders: Are they different?” (Harvard Business Review May-June 1977) writes that leaders are visionaries while managers are planners; leaders care about substance while the managers care about form and process. He writes that that the leaders inspire while the managers simply motivate.”

The room temperature drops three degrees when he enters; he passes orders, sets deadlines, abhors dissent, and believes in instant punishment. He trusts bureaucrats and technocrats instead of elected representatives and likes having a finger in every pie.

While launching the Sasti Roti scheme he sacked two provincial secretaries, one commissioner and three district coordination officers on presenting contrary views on the project. At the time of the much-trumpeted launch of the project, he had a settled thought as if everyone in the province was suffering with malnutrition and seeing ‘the moon as a loaf of bread.’ A leader listens to the dissenting voices and has the courage to go on the back foot whenever proved he is playing on a weak moral or technical pitch. But he didn’t.
The writing was on the wall: result was a loss of billions of rupees to the national kitty. Where has gone the Sasti Roti Act 2009, the mechanical tandoors, the dastarkhwans, the loans taken from commercial banks for the project and the hungry subjects? No one dares asking the Khadim-e-Aala about the Sasti Shohrat fiasco, neither his party nor the opposition. Now the N-Leaguers are even not ready to accept it as an error of judgement or error of execution on behalf of their CM.

After metros, OLMT (170-billion rupee project) is the new darling of His Highness for which the development funds of the whole province are being sacrificed. Even Zakat funds of various districts are being slashed to provide commuting services to a few thousand people of Lahore, commonly dubbed as Takhat Lahore. Recently a research report released by the Lahore Metro aur Aap (LMA) pointed out that the Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT) project had cost Rs 21 billion over the past six months. The report further points out that the government never properly made or implemented the environmental mitigation plan in the EIA.

He orders, and others must follow without questions. He set the deadline for completion of Danish schools neglecting bitter realities revolving around poor education system of the province and overlooking the valuable suggestions that the step would never uplift dismal state of education and literacy in Punjab. With millions of out of school children in the province, no one could appreciate the huge allocation of funds for Danish schools which can cater needs of a few hundreds or thousands children.

He may be an administrator, a manager or a plodding or flashy technocrat (successful or failed) but he’s definitely not a leader.  Public sector health care system is in dire straits, police-reforms has become a pipe dream, army has been forced to step in for countering militancy, tainted ministers are holding the portfolios, contracts are being awarded to Chinese firms in total disregard of PPRA rules, key bureaucrats in the province are working on erratic postings, billions of rupees are being spent on publicity campaigns etc. Despite all these facts, the leaguers claim that no other chief minister from KPK to Balochistan can hold a candle to Shahbaz Sharif.  A few days back, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif too expressed serious concern over low pace of work on Pakistan Millennium Development Goals (Pak MDGs) Community Development Program in Punjab.
He likes to be surrounded by bureaucrats and self-styled technocrats as they have mastered the survival-of-the-fittest art. They don’t paint anything but always rosy pictures and say nothing but yes to every command of their boss. They lack an ounce of courage to challenge any idea from the high office. On the other hand, the elected people, sometimes, dare asking questions and rarely raise objections as they feel the heat of being answerable to their constituents. Thanks to the spiral of silence phenomenon on which the whole control and command mechanism of party rests. Interestingly, once in a meeting being attended by dozens of MNAs and MPAs, the chief minister extolled the managerial capabilities of a commissioner to such extent that he went on expressing his wish to get the said baboo elected as an MPA from Faisalabad. A big egg on the faces of all party lawmakers present there!

Abraham Zaleznik in his article, “Managers and Leaders: Are they different?” (Harvard Business Review May-June 1977) writes that leaders are visionaries while managers are planners; leaders care about substance while the managers care about form and process. He writes that that the leaders inspire while the managers simply motivate. I will not labour the point as what Zalzenik writes stands clear like a crystal.

“He likes to be surrounded by bureaucrats and self-styled technocrats as they have mastered the survival-of-the-fittest art. They don’t paint anything but always rosy pictures and say nothing but yes to every command of their boss.”

When huge resistance and reluctance finally failed after years and on the orders of the apex court local bodies elections were conducted, every trick in the book was employed to delay polls for the offices of mayors and chairmen. This success has yet not changed its side and there exist no partners of power in Punjab. No delegation or devolution of power till today as a technocrat (name of mindset) trusts only technocrats and always bears skeptical views about the capability or intent of democratically elected representatives. Stanley Baldwin once said: “dictatorship is like a giant beech-tree – very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows under it.” Concentrating power to oneself and not preparing a next generation of capable leaders is a bad idea in democracy. Holding too many portfolios by the CM is in fact a sign of failure: failure in developing a competent team in last three decades by the party or its top leadership.

In “On Becoming a Leader”, Warren Bennis writes that the manager administers, the leader innovates. The manager focuses on systems and structure, the leader on people. The manager relies on control, the leader inspires trust. The manager imitates, the leader originates. The manager does things right, the leader, right thing.

Artist, craftsman or technocrat: In “Drama of Leadership”, Patricia Pitcher classifies leaders into three categories: artist, craftsman and technocrat. She writes: “A technocrat is someone who emphasizes the technical conceptions of a problem to the detriment of their social and human consequences. Which translates to something like, I understand that you may lose your house/job/car/child, but my research shows that the system will work better this way and I can’t make exceptions”.  Keep Orange Line Metro Train project and cries of its victims in mind.

By temperament, Pitcher says a technocrat is cold. “The room temperature drops three degrees when he or she enters. Everyone gets quiet and usually stops smiling. Serious looks get plastered on faces, like when kids are joking around and the third-grade teacher shows up.”  She says technocrat is difficult, uncompromising, stiff, intense, detail-oriented, hard-headed and fastidious. She further divides technocrats into pure, plodding and flashy technocrats. For flashy technocrats she writes: “….they will usually have 16 studies and 4 ‘experts’ to back their point of view. If you can have 16 studies and 4 established experts on a subject, it has to be an old idea because studies are necessarily based on past data and experts only become experts after studying an existing phenomenon.”

Chief Minister Punjab should come out of his own charisma and the false charm of English speaking baboos and listen to the sane voices of elected representatives; either they belong to the treasury or the opposition benches, if he really wants putting his house in order. I end here at the quote from American fantasy and science fiction author, Beth Revis, in which she says: “Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.”