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Abstract
While Pakistani politics regularly employs the rhetoric of provincial autonomy, there are powerful structural and empirical tendencies that have contributed to the centralisation of power. This paper examines the relationship between this concentration of power and the quality of the provincial administration. It argues that unless the provincial administration is rehabilitated and a real measure of fiscal autonomy is granted to the provincial units, Pakistan will continue to suffer a state apparatus and political process that is centralised, arbitrary and ineffective. The effectiveness of the Pakistani state apparatus has become a matter of international concern due to the US-led war on terror and the spill-over of the Taliban/Al-Qaeda insurgency into Pakistan. It is contended that fixing the problems inherent in Pakistan's administration require not only material inputs, but a change in attitude and orientation towards the provincial administration.
Notes
1For more on the devolution fiasco see Devolution in Pakistan: Reform or Regression (Islamabad: International Crisis Group, 2004); and Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Foqia Sadiq Khan and Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Initiating Devolution for Service Delivery in Pakistan: Ignoring the Power Structure (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007).
2Abu'l Fazl Allami, A'in-i-Akbari (trans. H. Blochmann) (Calcutta: Calcutta Madrassah, 1873, rpr. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2003), pp.236–9.
3Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol.1, 1200–1750 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004), p.172; and I.H. Qureshi, Akbar: The Architect of the Mughal Empire (Karachi: Ma'aref Ltd., 1978), pp.172–200.
4In 1647, with total revenues of Rs220 million, the 68 highest-ranked officers and princes accounted for 37 percent of all taxes collected. See Irfan Habib, Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perspective (New Delhi: Tulika, 1995), p.97. This enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of a few dozen senior members of the official hierarchy close to the emperor was what made possible the material domination of India by the Mughals.
5Abu'l Fazl described the functions of provincial officials in relation to the centre and drove home the point that their appointment and transfer depended on royal favour. Governors and field officers typically had military or quasi-military functions to perform as well. Abu'l Fazl, A'in-i-Akbari, pp.570–7.
6Ibn Hasan, The Central Structure of the Mughal Empire and its Practical Working up to the Year 1657 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1967), p.85.
7The ruling class consisted of Turks, Mongols, Uzbeks, Persians, Arabs, Rajputs, Marhattas, Afghans, a smattering of Indian Muslims and a few exceptional Hindus. Turks, Persians and Afghans accounted for 60 percent of the imperial higher bureaucracy between 1595 and 1678, Rajputs 13 percent and Indian Muslims 13 percent. See M. Athar Ali, Mughul India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), p.68.
8There emerged a ‘recognizably modern, continental style and structure of politics’ which ‘was the arena in which were played out the issues of Imperial governance’. See Judith M. Brown, ‘India’, in Judith M. Brown (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol.IV, The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.429.
9Jeremy Bernstein, Dawning of the Raj: The Life and Trial of Warren Hastings (London: Auram Press, 2000), describes Hastings' government and later impeachment for crimes against the Indian people in considerable detail. Hastings brought to an end the dual government of Clive's day and sought to centralise power in the hands of the governor-general. That said, not enough people fully appreciated the difficulty of Hastings' task of ‘constructing the framework of civil administration from want of local knowledge, from the inefficiency of a refractory and corrupt Civil Service, and the venality of native officials’. See G.W. Forrest (ed.), Selections from the State Papers of the Governor-General of India, Vol.I, Hastings (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1910), p.161.
10This particular change was motivated by England's own experience and constitutional struggle. In the Dominions of Settlement, which at one time included what became the United States of America, these experiences were implanted as direct results of population transfer. In Dominions of Conquest such as India, which had their own powerful traditions of government, the going was a lot slower and rougher. Interestingly, ‘Tocqueville, believing the strength of American democracy to lie in its local institutions, traveled almost exclusively in the provinces, greatly neglected the organs of the central authority, visited Washington only briefly, towards the end of his journey, and with only perfunctory interest. Custine, coming to a country where power was centralised as nowhere else in the Christian world, quite properly and naturally confined his attention largely to the capital city, the court, and the central apparatus of government’. George F. Kennan, The Marquis de Custine and His ‘Russia in 1839’ (London: Hutchinson, 1972), p.19.
11Thus a secretary to the central government in British India could, in the 1940s, expect to be paid Rs4,000 per month, while an officer of the Mughal state with the equivalent rank and function (mansab of 5000) could, in the 1580s, expect to be paid Rs30,000 per month. The salary of the British viceroy in India was Rs21,000 per month. The monetary amounts are given here without any adjustment for inflation, meaning that in real terms the salaries of the Mughal officers were many times greater than those of their British successors. That said, in absolute terms the salaries of the British officers were sufficient to maintain an elite lifestyle in India and an upper-middle-class one in Britain.
12This is one of the principal arguments made by Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp.4–5.
13An excellent example of the emergence of such a response is Raja Rammohan Ray. While criticising the lapses in judgment that he found prevalent in Indian society, Ray advocated open debate and enlightenment on a rationally-interpreted European pattern. On the issue of a free press, for instance, he argued: ‘A Government conscious of rectitude of intention, cannot be afraid of public scrutiny by means of the Press, since this instrument can be equally well employed as a weapon of defence, and a Government possessed of immense patronage is more especially secure, since the greater part of the learning and talent in the country being already enlisted in the service, its actions, if they have any shadow of Justice, are sure of being ably and successfully defended’. Quoted in Bruce Carlisle Robertson (ed.), The Essential Writings of Raja Rammohan Ray (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.249.
14For a theoretically-grounded perspective on the crisis of imperial succession and the emergence of Mohammad Ali Jinnah as the leader of Muslim India, see Sikandar Hayat, The Charismatic Leader: Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and the Creation of Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008).
15A most accessible window on the working of provincial politics can be found in Lionel Carter (ed.), Punjab Politics 1936–39: The Start of Provincial Autonomy, Governors' Fortnightly Reports and Other Key Documents (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004). Many of the reports note the difficulty that the Congress Party faced in making inroads in the Punjab and how the Unionists were successful in mobilising caste and local identities to form a durable base of popular support. That of course did not stop the Unionists, led by Sikandar Hayat, from establishing a working relationship with the Muslim League as a possible counterweight to the Congress in the national arena. It was no accident, therefore, that what became known as the Pakistan Resolution was passed at Lahore, capital of the Punjab, on 23 March 1940. Ian Talbot has also thoroughly examined the historical legacy that shaped regionalism and provincialism in Pakistan. This legacy expressed itself in the Punjab in the form of ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism or viceregalism’, the chief characteristics of which ‘were paternalism, wide discretionary powers and the personalization of authority’. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), p.64.
16This allowed the Muslim League to withdraw its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan on 29 July 1946 when it became clear that Nehru's statement was not merely his personal opinion but the new Congress policy. Sharif-al-Mujahid, Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation (Karachi: Quaid-i-Azam Academy, 1981), pp.502–5.
17Before the 1857–58 rebellion at least some British had come to understand that while force was the ultimate basis of the British Indian imperial state, it was in the enlightened self-interest of the rulers ‘that Government should disguise, as much as possible, the principle of its support’. Selection of Papers from the Records at the East India House Relating to the Revenue, Police and Civil and Criminal Justice under the Company's Governments in India, Vol II (London: E. Cox and Son, 1820), p.187.
18Perhaps ‘the most outstanding contribution of the British rule in India’ was a pattern ‘of civil-military relations which emphasized an over-all civilian control and the military's aloofness from politics’. Hasan Askari Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan, 1947–1997 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2000), p.33.
19Even critics of this policy conceded that ‘security against favouritism and jobbery’ could only come with a system of promotions based primarily on seniority. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Organisation of the Indian Army, Together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1859), p.xi.
20Europe in the early twenty-first century is in many ways confronted with dilemmas regarding the autonomy of the units comprising the European Union. The European debate on federalism is reminiscent of the debates that took place in India in the early twentieth century or in the United States of America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The question of achieving ‘Democratic Liberty on a Continental Scale’ remains a vexing and contentious one. For more see Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (London: AllenLane the Penguin Press, 2000). Particularly relevant is Chapter I, ‘Democratic Liberty on a Continental Scale?’ pp.1–24.
21 Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform Session 1933–34, Vol. 1, Part I (London: HMSO, 1934), p.160.
22The percentage of the revenues that district boards received as transfers from the provincial governments was, on average, 42 percent in 1920–21. For more relevant economic statistics see Dharma Kumar, The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol II, c.1757–c.1970 (Cambridge: The Press Syndicate of the Cambridge University, 1982, rpr., Delhi: Orient Longman, 1984).
23For instance, in the provincial secretariats of the new state of Pakistan, ‘74 positions above the ranks of assistant secretary had to be filled…but only 22 Muslim provincial service officers had held such posts before….’ See Ralph Braibanti, ‘Public Bureaucracy and Judiciary in Pakistan’, in Joseph LaPolambara (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p.380. For shortages in the military officer corps see below.
24 ‘The larger interests of the State’ dictated that the higher bureaucracy in general and the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) and the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) ‘should be used to promote homogeneity and a common outlook’. Prime Minister's Secretariat, Government of Pakistan, ‘Correspondence with the Hon'ble Minister for Interior, Information and Broadcasting’, National Documentation Centre, Islamabad, Folder Five, 1949, File No. 3(4)-PMS/49, p.133.
25Declassified documents reveal an astonishing lack of interest in the problem of refugee rehabilitation on the part of the Punjab provincial authorities. This necessitated direct central intervention in order to rescue the issue from the mire of local intrigue and politics. Cabinet Secretariat, Prime Minister's Secretariat Branch, Government of Pakistan, ‘Correspondence with the Governor of West Punjab (Ref. Rehabilitation of Refugees)’, National Documentation Centre, Islamabad, Folder Three, 1948, File No. 2(2)-PMS/48.
26For more on the integration of Balochistan see Martin Axmann, Back to the Future: The Khanate of Kalat and the Genesis of Baloch Nationalism, 1915–1955 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2009).
27The centre also retained ‘the full discretion to increase the customs and central excise duties and to retain the whole of the proceeds’. Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, Government of Pakistan, ‘Readjustment of the Tax Structure Between the Centre and the Provinces’, 1947, File No. 224/CF/47, p.2.
28Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, Government of Pakistan, ‘Half Yearly Summary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’, No. 69 (5), EA/Admin/49, November 1948–April 1949, 1.1948, File No. 150/CF/48.
29Francis Mudie, the last British governor of the Punjab, wrote to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan that the provincial government was failing to perform its functions: ‘No questions of policy are even contemplated’, Mudie warned, while the ministers and their cronies were becoming ‘more and more rapacious’. Prime Minister's Secretariat, Government of Pakistan, ‘Correspondence with the Governor, West Punjab’, National Documentation Centre, Islamabad, Folder Six, 1949, File No. 2(2)-PMS/49, p.7.
30 Report of the Indian Sandhurst Committee, November 14, 1926 (London: HMSO, 1927), p.22. The target was 50 percent Indianisation by 1952, which would have made possible more or less complete Indianisation by the late 1960s or early 1970s.
31Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, Government of Pakistan, ‘Nationalisation Committee's Report’, 1949, File No. 173/CF/49, p.8.
32This view was strongly reinforced by reports coming in from different sources. For instance, on 10 January 1949 Francis Mudie, the governor of the Punjab, wrote to the prime minister that the Punjab's chief minister, the Nawab of Mamdot, ‘has, to everyone's knowledge, defeated the Centre, even the Qaid, every time that they have intervened and the feeling is growing that the Centre is powerless even when the Government is hopelessly corrupt and the administration paralysed’. Prime Minister's Secretariat, Government of Pakistan, ‘Correspondence with the Governor, West Punjab’, National Documentation Centre, Islamabad, Folder Six, 1949, File No. 2(2)-PMS/49, p.4.
33Hasan Zaheer, a member of the CSP and former cabinet secretary, wrote a definitive history of the first coup attempt in Pakistan's history. See Hasan Zaheer, The Times and Trial of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy 1951: The First Coup Attempt in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
34Justice Mohammed Munir, then with the Lahore High Court, chaired the inquiry commission into the disturbances. His scathing critique of the ulema and their political benefactors can be found in his memoirs. See Mohammed Munir, From Jinnah to Zia (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1980), pp.46–7. Justice Munir would go on to become one of the leading advocates of authoritarian rule in Pakistan and help legitimise the dismissal of the First Constituent Assembly in 1954, and the military coup of 1958.
35Prime Minister's Secretariat, Government of Pakistan, ‘Correspondence with the Hon'ble Minister for Interior and States & Frontier Regions’, National Documentation Centre, Islamabad, Folder Twenty-One, 1952, File No. 3(5)-PMS/52, p.74.
36 Ibid., p.77.
37For more on Justice Munir's exploits and the impact they had on constitutionalism in Pakistan, see Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada (ed.), Dissolution of Constituent Assembly of Pakistan and the Legal Battles of Moulvi Tamizuddin (Karachi: Asia Law House, 1995).
38Ayub Khan, ‘A Short Appreciation of Present and Future Problems of Pakistan’, in Amanullah Memon (ed.), The Altaf Gauhar Papers: Documents Towards the Making of the Constitution of 1962 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2005).
39 Report of the Provincial Administration Commission February 1960 (Islamabad: Printing Corporation of Pakistan, 1982), p.14.
40 Ibid., p.7.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., p.94.
43 Ibid., p.95.
44 Ibid., p.134.
45 Ibid., p.3.
46Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, Government of Pakistan, ‘Standards for Appointments of Secretaries to Provincial Government’, 1955, File No. 256/CF/55, p.1.
47 Report of the Finance Commission, 1962 (Karachi: Government of Pakistan Press, 1962), p.4.
48 Ibid., p.7.
49 Ibid., p.15.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid, p.62.
52 Ibid, p.12.
53 Ibid, p.9.
54 Ibid., p.24.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., p.25.
59H.S.M. Ishaque, ‘Future of Pakistan—One Country or Two: A Formula for Consideration’ (Rawalpindi, 5 July 1961), in Memon (ed.), The Altaf Gauhar Papers, p.125.
60 Ibid., p.126.
61A total of 219 executive ordinances were passed between December 1971 and July 1977. The continuation of the state of emergency meant that fundamental rights remained suspended, and rules ‘governing the appointment and superannuation of Chief Justices were changed by constitutional amendment to ensure the subservience of the superior courts to the political executive’. White Paper on the Performance of the Bhutto Regime, Vol. II, Treatment of Fundamental State Institutions (Islamabad: Printing Corporation of Pakistan Press, 1979), p.44.
62When Vaqar Ahmad asked Bhutto to include provisions for giving the officers to be dismissed a chance to defend themselves, Bhutto told him ‘that he did not believe in the Anglo-Saxon sense of justice and his Revolutionary Government would not accept any such suggestion’. Ibid., p.122 (italics in original).
63Rafi Raza, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Pakistan, 1967–1977 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.265. Rafi Raza was a member of Bhutto's cabinet and served as minister for industries.
64Zafar Iqbal Rathore, ‘Failure of National Integration in Pakistan’, unpublished PhD thesis, National Defence College, Islamabad, 1984, pp.83–5.
65Bhutto's intolerance of autonomy and criticism was reflected in his management of the PPP: ‘Distrustful of his own party men, and particularly of the leftists in the organization, Bhutto himself systematically weakened the party and purged it of its cadre of activities and ideologists’. This effectively transformed the PPP ‘into an extension of the Bhutto family.’ See Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah, ‘Pakistan People's Party: The Twin Legacies of Socialism and Dynastic Rule’, in Subrata K. Mitra, Clemens Spies and Mike Enskat (eds), Political Parties in South Asia (London: Praeger Greenwood, 2004), p.165.
66Bhutto was subsequently found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and executed in April 1979.
67The Zia regime set up 4100 elected local councils with a total of 71,737 elected local members under the overall charge of the civil service. See Muhammad Afzal, ‘Local Government’, in Jamilur Rehman Khan (ed.), Government and Administration in Pakistan (Islamabad: Pakistan Public Administrative Research Centre, O&M Division, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of Pakistan, 1987), p.644. Government and Administration in Pakistan also includes chapters on district administration, rural development, and planning agencies, and is one of the most important works on public administration in Pakistan published in the 1980s.
68Thus the provincial tax revenues as a percentage of central tax revenues stood at a mere 5 percent or Rs6 billion against a total of Rs110 billion in 1987. S. Akbar Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan's Economy (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.204.
69Syed Ijlal Haider Zaidi, ‘Provincial Administration’, Summary for the Cabinet, in PCPPI-616 Estt. Div-14-6-82 (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 1982), p.15.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid., p.17.
72 Ibid. One estimate is that typically only about 30 percent of the amount spent on development by the Pakistani government actually reaches the intended beneficiaries, with the rest stolen, wasted or otherwise intercepted by intermediaries. See Tasneem A. Siddiqui, Towards Good Governance (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.30. Siddiqui is a retired civil servant with extensive experience in social uplift programs.
73Pakistan's population grew from 33.78 million in 1951 to 132 million in 1997. Urban population grew from 17 percent of the total in 1951 to perhaps 40 percent in 1997. Figures for the period after 1981 are estimates based on projected growth rates. No census was conducted between 1981 and 1998. The 1998 census was vitiated by politics. No census was conducted in 2008. See S. Akbar Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan's Economy, p.3.
74Syed Ijlal Haider Zaidi, ‘Provincial Administration’, p.20.
75 Ibid., p.21.
76 Ibid.
77The Population Census Organisation's webpage contains most of the important census data compiled between 1951 and 1998. For urban growth rates with reference to major cities see http://www.census.gov.pk/MajorCities.htm, accessed 18 Aug. 2009.
78Syed Ijlal Haider Zaidi, ‘Provincial Administration’, p.23.
83 Ibid.
79 Ibid., p.25.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid., p.26.
82 Ibid.
84 Ibid., p.27.
85 Ibid., p.29.
86 Ibid., p.30.
87Zafar Iqbal Rathore, Chairman of the Focal Group on Police Reform, Rahore Papers, ‘State and Order’, paper presented to the interior minister, Lt.-General Moinuddin Haider, February 2000.
88This would be somewhat similar to the pre-1947 Indian Education Service or the Service of Engineers. These services were All-India Services until 1935 when, with the transfer of responsibility to the provinces, it was decided to gradually phase them out and let each province organise the relevant aspect of administration for itself.
89Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) places Pakistan 139th out of 180 countries. See ‘Pakistan Scores 2.4/10 with a range of 2.1–2.7/10’ [http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009, accessed 3 Feb. 2010].