Restructuring the bureaucracy

The federal government, under the guidance of Dr Nadeemul Haq, the Deputy Chairman Planning Commission and a former International Monetary Fund staffer, is considering a profound change in the civil service structure: replacing grade 22 scales and various other cadres of the civil bureaucracy into a contract-based National Executive Service (NEC).
The objective of such restructuring is to ensure that the government has access to the crème de la crème of technocrats of Pakistani citizenship/ancestry operating within the private sector (in the country or abroad) or in multilaterals with the educational background and experience to turn our civilian institutions around.
It is widely acknowledged that Pakistan's civilian bureaucracy today is a victim of diminishing capacity, over-politicisation and corruption which together with the politicians is responsible for seriously undermining Pakistan's economic, social, and political development. Many date the decline of our civil service's effectiveness to the 1973 Constitution's reduction of protections afforded to the civil service in the previous constitutions - protections present in the 1956, 1962 and interim 1972 constitutions, including safeguards against dismissal, reduction in rank or compulsory retirement of public servants. What was regarded as central to Z A Bhutto's strategy was the introduction of the policy of lateral recruitment, which effectively increased political influence over the bureaucracy - a condition that no subsequent ruler, civilian or military, thought it politically expedient to revisit.
That policy continues to this day and accounts for the continued politicisation of the bureaucracy, wherein promotions are unlikely without political patronage. Be that as it may, the US model has some merit as it allows for more than 1000 political appointments that are automatically null and void as and when a new administration takes over the White House. In short, there is a legitimate reason for a political government to require to appoint its own loyalists in some key positions. However, this must not be allowed across-the-board. At present, the bureaucracy is heavily politicised - a fact demonstrated before and after elections with thousands of civil servants transferred to serve the wishes of their political masters. This is not unique to the federal government alone, but has also been much in evidence in appointments by the provincial governments.
There is, therefore, a danger that Dr Nadeemul Haq's proposal to allow contract-based NECs may be implemented as Bhutto's lateral entrants' policy, had some major flaws, including resistance by those who considered themselves senior to those who were allowed to supercede them. Dr Haq may respond to this flaw by pointing out that he is considering proposing an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one, or in other words a process that would take seven to 10 years to complete and would be premised on the retirement of senior officers and their replacement by the contract-based NECs. However critics point out that as this policy would compromise the promotions of the mid-level civil servants, resistance within the bureaucracy would remain high.
Numerous studies have been undertaken on how best to move forward. Recommendations have ranged from rightsizing to strengthening internal and external accountability mechanisms, to rationalising antiquated and outdated rules, procedures and regulations to promotions based on merit. Apart from political interference in promotions, there is also the element of ethnicity and that too needs to be resolved. As matters stand today resentment against Punjab, constituting over 50 percent of total population, continues among the smaller provinces.
There is no doubt that the need to support civil service reforms is critical if the objective is to effect development. Foreign assistance is being increasingly held hostage to the general perception in the international community that Pakistan's institutions have decreasing capacity to spend foreign aid effectively and transparently. Most multilateral and bilateral donors are using their own audit mechanisms to ensure transparency and efficiency. Thus the need for some reforms in our state institutions is critical. One would hope that the federal government takes all the stakeholders on board at an early stage of the process, so that it is not compromised at a later stage like all such previous proposals.