Saturday, August 31, 2013
Stronger Institutions for a Better Pakistan
Written by Hadeed Sher
General elections are over and now the political system has entered in a steady state condition. It's high time that we all demand our representatives for the development of strong institutions. It is a long established fact that since the creation of Pakistan only army has proved to be a strong institution. Their strength due to their institutional structure urged them in the past to coerce the majority through dictatorships and Marshal laws. The absence of any strong political force in general and the lack of institutional discipline in particular yielded to the corrupt bureaucracy and a fragile democratic structure in Pakistan.
Consider the case of natural calamities in Pakistan. During the first decade of the 21st century the establishment of Disaster management authority was intended to rehabilitate the areas stuck with natural disasters. The lack of institutional discipline costed us nothing but the poor performance at the cost of corruption. Every two or three years flood across the country demonstrates the ineptness of NDMA. In case of any disaster the government sees no ways out except to call the army. The presence of army in such conditions is not a big deal in democratic countries, but here in Pakistan it is. People here feel that if every work has to be done by ARMY why the hell civilian institutions are here. May be it is because a huge amount of budget allocation makes them capable of conducting such rescue operation, or may be the ineptness of government officials is the reason. I opt for the second reason, because most of our rulers established new departments and institutes not for the public service but to reduce the unemployment rate. Instead of making the officials of department strong enough so that they can establish the writ of the state they are appointed to pretend a public friendly government. The hiring of people on political grounds drastically degrades their performance. Similarly the development of public works projects on political grounds needs to be halted at the earliest.
The failure in establishing institutes is evident from the fact that departments with a very tough bottleneck now have countless top notch officers enjoying just perks and privileges. How come it is possible that a gas worth 1 billion PKR is being stolen in an area without acknowledging the local staff members. The lack of any disciplinary action actually permits such events. It is indeed good that the authorities took action but why they failed to locate it earlier. Isn't it because it is a department not an institution ?
The activism of the executives of the provincial government is also a proof in this regard. The heinous crimes are neither reported nor the culprits are arrested before the CM arrives at the spot. The theft of electricity and gas is not possible without the help of ground metering departments. The same is true for those involved in land grabbing of Railway and other government properties. The collapse of proper institutional mechanism is actually sinking the state of Pakistan. Now is the high time that instead of hunting for fancy headlines and a lush looking photographs of social media pages, our politicians actually go for building stronger institutions, because institutions last people die.
