Provinces by design

 

Is Pakistan’s governance architecture, created by the British Raj and constitutionalised in 1973 for a country of about 60 million, still the right tool for governing a country of 241 million? It is not. If more, smaller provinces are that ‘right tool’, then the mechanisms of governance in the new provinces or administrative units are absolutely fundamental. A badly designed split will be worse than no split.

The federation is lopsided in two opposite ways. Some units are too large to manage, and one is too sparse to serve. Public administration research is consistent on this: beyond a certain scale, the information and coordination costs of a single tier rise faster than the benefits of scale. Provincial secretariats have become bottlenecks, and district officers answer to capitals that cannot see them.

The fiscal-federalism logic of subsidiarity points strongly to shifting resources to smaller units. The 18th Amendment (2010) and the Seventh National Finance Commission Award (2009) devolved substantial resources and functions from the federal government to the provinces, using a complex formula that weighted population at 82 per cent but went beyond. But look at what happened next. Devolution ceased at the provincial capital. Within provinces, transfers to districts became discretionary.

The 18th Amendment and the NFC in practice built a rules-based system from Islamabad to the provinces and a patronage-based system below that. New provincial units with constitutional standing, their own smaller assemblies and their own NFC claims could lock rules-based transfers into the lower tier, rather than relying on the goodwill of whoever rules the province.

The disparity inside provinces is as large as the disparity between them. Southern Punjab, northern Sindh, south Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Hazara, and the Makran coast all show welfare indicators well below their provincial averages. Aggregate provincial statistics hide this because the capitals pull the averages up. Smaller units can make outcomes transparent, and what is visible can be audited, benchmarked, and held to account.

Comparative international record is mixed. India’s 2000 reorganisation created Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand. The former two performed relatively better, but Jharkhand’s record is poor. Telangana in 2014 is too recent for clean conclusions. Indonesia’s pemekaran, the proliferation of new regions after 2000, created many new units without viability criteria. Costs rose and gains in service delivery were modest and uneven.

The lesson is not that new units fail. It is that outcomes depend on whether the laws and regulations that create them incorporate viability thresholds, transparent fiscal design and improve the quality of the political process behind the split. Where those were in place, gains followed. Where they were absent, there were immense costs without benefit and consequent public disillusionment.

Pakistan’s constitutional machinery provides a higher-quality political process than conventionally assumed. Article 160 and the NFC process already provide a framework for resource distribution that can accommodate additional units. Article 140A, which mandates local government, shows that the constitution already assumes a multi-tier system.

Article 239(4) requires that any amendment altering a province’s boundaries pass that province’s assembly by a two-thirds majority, in addition to the two-thirds majorities in both houses of parliament. Supporters of new provinces or unions should embrace the constitution, not circumvent it, because a split that is legitimate only on paper will not hold.

The question that remains is not whether Pakistan’s constitutional architecture can bear new units but whether we are willing to design them properly. What would this proper design look like? Five principles might guide us in the right direction. One: fiscal neutrality at the point of creation. New units should be funded within the existing provincial shares, not on top of them, with a transition formula that protects the parent province from a sudden revenue shock. Article 160’s protection against reducing provinces’ share needs to be handled explicitly, not by assumption.

Two: a reform of the Senate. If each new province brings a fixed Senate quota, the Senate balloons and every province gains leverage over the centre. The upper house formula should be revisited so that additional units do not simply mean additional veto players. Three: Transparency through published viability criteria. Population, revenue base, administrative capacity and geographic coherence should be assessed by an independent commission before anything is put to a vote. This is exactly what Indonesia lacked.

Four: tested consent. The political process should test demand in affected populations through an assembly vote and, where parliament chooses to use it, a referendum. The aim is to separate regions that actually want a change from proposals driven mainly by party advantage. Five: sequencing. Begin with reformed administrative divisions or provincial administrative units, build their fiscal and personnel systems, and let the evidence show whether they deserve constitutional status. A reform that can be reviewed after five years is easier to agree on than one that cannot be undone.

Serious objections begin with cost. New units in the current system mean new secretariats, assemblies and public service commissions. That is a real recurring cost. The honest response is that it must be set against the cost of the status quo, which includes poorly targeted development spending and weak service delivery in neglected regions. Fiscal neutrality and a streamlined governance structure are how we keep the cost from becoming open-ended.

The quality of future governance is fundamental. The most persuasive objection to creating new units with the present system is that these will merely replicate corruption, patronage, and weak institutions. Structural reform is therefore necessary before creation of new units. Reform of civil service, local government and procurement is hard to sustain in units too large to supervise. Smaller scale is not a cure for poor governance, but it is a precondition for better monitoring and management through three design tools: technology, transparency, and competition.

Strengthened and more autonomous local government is the strongest alternative to new provinces and should not be dismissed casually. If provinces genuinely devolved funds and functions to elected local bodies, new provinces would not be needed. Sixteen years after the 18th Amendment, it is clear provinces will not strengthen local governments. Local bodies, as experience shows, can be starved and suspended. The question for advocates of the local-government route is what makes it credible this time?

In some provinces, especially Sindh, a boundary change is felt as well propagated politically as an existential question, not an administrative one. This is a political fact, not an argument for avoiding the topic, and it is why the constitutional process of consent is not a technicality but a precondition.

Pakistan’s constitution is a living document, not a fossil. It was drawn more than half a century ago for a population a quarter of today’s size. We should periodically and objectively test whether the federating units are serving their respective populations, and when they plainly do not, we should reform them through a rule-bound, consent-based and fiscally disciplined process. We do not need to settle every detail today. But we need to agree on logical criteria by which we would decide – criteria applicable to all provinces.

Let the province-creation debate stop being a contest of slogans and become a policy question we can actually answer through dialogue, iron will to reform, hard thinking, and with respect and profound concern for improving the lives and livelihoods of the Pakistani people and their future generations. “We have it in our power”, declared Thomas Paine, “to begin the world over again”.

The writer has served as Pakistan’s minister for foreign affairs, defence, commerce,and energy. He tweets/posts @kdastgirkhan. These are his personal views.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

Originally published in The News