Pakistan’s civil services rife with inefficiency, nepotism and corruption.
You want to send your child to the city’s best school, but she is rejected in favor of the children of better-connected citizenry… Your parents left you some land, but months after you requested that it be legally transferred, the authorities have still not responded… Your partner gets a serious infection, but has to wait for many hours before being seen by a doctor at the public clinic. You go to the post office to send a letter to your sister overseas about the daily frustrations of life in Pakistan, but you have to wait for over an hour and a half until a postal teller is free.
This general gridlock, ineptitude and corruption is exactly the animal which the International Crisis Group has tried to tackle in a scathing report on the state of Pakistan’s civil service.
The latest report from the international conflict-prevention think tank warns that the majority of Pakistanis view the country’s 2.4 million civil servants as inefficient, unresponsive and corrupt.
"Military rule has left behind a demoralized and inefficient bureaucracy that was used to ensure regime survival," the Crisis Group said in a statement. "Low salaries, insecure tenure, obsolete accountability mechanisms and political interference have spawned widespread corruption and impunity. If Pakistan’s deteriorating civil service is not urgently repaired, public disillusionment and resentment could be used by the military to justify another spell of authoritarian rule."
Amidst heavy criticism of the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. has poured into Pakistan since the September 11 attacks, the report stresses that the consequences of a failed civil service fall mostly on Pakistan’s poor, making the state more vulnerable to political radicalism and militant groups.
"With citizens increasingly affected by conflict and militancy, the government’s ability to ensure law and order, as well as to provide services such as education and health care, will be as vital to containing the spread of radicalism countrywide as the use of force against militant groups."
Robert Templer, Asia Program Director at the International Crisis Group, said that while many countries struggle with corruption, what is unique in Pakistan is that the civil services’ management is not improving over time.
"There are problems with bureaucracy in all countries, the problem with Pakistan is that it has gotten significantly worse over the past decade," he told The Media Line. "One of the key problems in Pakistan has been the delivery of public goods: the management of healthcare, education, the settling of land disputes, things like this. To manage these things you need a functioning civil service, but we’ve seen a steady erosion of the civil service’s management and independence."
"For most people their main contact with the state is through the civil service," Templer said. "But civil servants are more interested in serving the political interests of those above them than in providing services. It breaks the trust that people have with their government and a non-functional civil service is also very inhibiting on the economy as a whole."
Iqbal Khattak, Bureau Chief of the Daily Times in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, agreed with the Crisis Group report.
"There are no checks and balances to keep the civil service responsive and transparent," he told The Media Line. "There are undue powers within the civil bureaucracy and when voted into power, politicians play a dubious role in seeking the bureaucracy’s help in governance in return for a free hand to civil servants."
"Postings to good offices are not dependent upon a civil servant’s ability, capacity or experience," Khattak said. “What is needed to get good posting is a good relation with one political party or another. Merit is in no way considered."
"When Pakistan won independence in 1947 from the colonial powers it did not install its own governance system and started living with an inherited governance system," he explained. "That system is good if you are occupying a country, but it left the civil bureaucracy in Pakistan enjoying unlimited powers and perks."
"Former Gen. Pervez Musharraf did not like it," Khattak said. "He cut the bureaucracy to its [current] size, introducing a local government system in which elected representatives were given sweeping powers, replacing the British-time governance system of commissioner, deputy commissioner and assistant commissioner at district level."
"But this change was not liked by the civil bureaucracy, putting it under the command of elected representatives and depriving them of control over the province and the district," he added. "Both the civil bureaucracy and the politicians opposed the military’s interference in national politics. With no in-built accountability mechanism, corruption was allowed to creep into civil service."
Ahmed Quraishi, Director of Project Pakistan 21, a strategic analysis think tank in Pakistan, also placed the blame for the state of Pakistan’s civil service on British colonial administrators and post-independence rulers who failed to change the system.
"The service was created by the British colonizers to manage the areas under their control," he told The Media Line. "Unfortunately, after independence, Pakistan didn’t change the service and continued with the British-made civil service. The laws and rules of business that British administrators laid down do not provide for innovation or responsiveness to local people’s needs."
"For a country like Pakistan which started from scratch after independence, it was the job of Pakistan’s rulers – politicians and military – to adapt the bureaucracy and civil service to national needs," Quraishi said. "That didn’t happen. Over time, civil service has turned into a cartel that jealously protects its interests and fails those politicians in power who refuse to cooperate."
"There are many reasons, including attempts by politicians to meddle into civil service promotions and politicians co-opting civil servants in corruption," he added. "Almost all Pakistanis know this but can’t do anything about it because of a failed political system."
But Ghazala Khan, Editor of The Pakistani Spectator, argued that the Crisis Group’s claims were overdone.
"That’s not really true, because in Pakistan after the army, the civil service is the most organized body and its tentacles are spread throughout the country," he told The Media Line. "It’s kind of stagnant. It’s caliber and quality is neither improving nor declining. They are not the only ones who actually make the establishment along with the army, but they are also among the king makers in Pakistan. They are in essence the movers and shakers of every significant thing happening in Pakistan."