Not as good as it sounds
Much has been written and said about our ailing system of bureaucracy. A direct descendant of the iron-grid of district administrators right from the days of the Company, our system of civil service has been rightly identified as one that does not belong to a democratic republic. Those fondly remembering a time when the standards of the civil service were much better are, in effect, remembering a caricatured simulacrum. For, at the critical initial stages in the evolution of our country, it were the shenanigans of the then supposedly professional bureaucracy, who ruled the roost in the first decade of our existence, that vectored Pakistan away from the democratic principles that had been envisioned for it.
Much, however, has been done to it by external forces. This includes both the stark politicisation that the various political parties indulged in during their respective tenures and the incessant cultivation of an anti-politician approach by the military. The truncated tenures of democracy have enforced a belief in the bureaucracy that politicians might come and go but the permanent network remains. This narrative fosters an irreverent attitude in the bureaucracy, with many of them not heeding even direct instructions of elected officials. In the different sets of attitudes found in the bureaucracy, there is a considerable bit that will change course only upon the direct involvement of their particular chief minister. Not the concerned provincial minister, not even the relevant federal minister. This apathy for public representatives was most stark in our recent experiment with local governments, the resumption of which is by now scandalously overdue.
The chief justices recent request to the bureaucrats to not follow illegal orders and rely more on their conscience is correct if taken at face value. But it is the grey areas where the problems come. Bureaucrats favouring their own judgement and interpretation of the law over that of the elected representatives will perpetuate more of the same. We need a professional, neutral and honest bureaucracy. But one that is at the disposal of those who have the mandate of the teeming millions.
