Celebrating provincial autonomy

July 1, declared as the day of provincial autonomy to mark the completion of the devolution process, failed to elicit the kind of public and media attention as it rightfully deserved, given its far-reaching impact on the direction of our state and society.
While national attention was rightfully focused on what was transpiring in Pakistan's financial hub, Karachi, the political parties remained busy in trading allegations without offering any concrete insight into the enigma Pakistan increasingly finds itself in. This trivialisation of the debate on key policy issues caused political forces to cut a sorry figure in front of the people who expected better handle on the situation from the political elite.
As Karachi burnt and innocent people lost their lives to stray bullets, political forces played to the gallery and did little to stem the tide of violence and mayhem. In these dire circumstances, the country's national political scene remained abuzz with talk of the Grand National Alliance. Despite the severity of these challenges, July 1 deserved to be celebrated with zeal and zest as it represented the success of politics of reconciliation the political forces demonstrated on the occasion of the passage of historic 18th constitutional amendment.
The observers of the national scene are aware of the fact that traditionally speaking, lack of political will and inability of successive administrations to transfer political, economic and administrative power to the federating units has been at the heart of the present predicaments and challenges the country is bogged down in. An historical look at the gradual evolution of provincial autonomy in the context of Pakistan is in order, which would give one an idea as to what the completion of the devolution process symbolises.
The Muslims of the sub-continent based their demand for a separate homeland on their right to self-determination. Their demand reflected a gradual evolution starting from 1882 to 1909 to 1919 to 1935. These constitutional arrangements indicated the slow and gradual surrender of power to the federating units though the major bulk of power remained concentrated in the ruling British. The struggle for Pakistan was premised on garnering maximum provincial autonomy for the Muslim-majority areas.
After the partition took place in 1947, those who succeeded the Quaid-e-Azam favoured a strong centre and invoked the magnitude of post-partition settlement issues and dangers of foreign aggression to support their stance. Three provincial governments were sent packing on the contentious provincial issue. The first and second constitution drafting committees could not come up to the task of reconciling differences between advocates of a strong centre and autonomous provincial governments.
Hence, the country functioned without a consensus-based constitution simply on the Government of India Act 1935 as amended in 1947. The merger of provinces belonging to West Pakistan into One Unit in 1955 was a strong blow to the idea of provincial autonomy. The Constitutions of 1956 and 1962 enhanced the powers of the central government to the detriment of the federating units.
The heart-rending incident of the separation of East Pakistan largely owes itself to the denial of provincial autonomy and fair distribution of powers between the federal and provincial governments. Consequently, they launched a mass movement to get their due rights and the military action against them resulted in the creation of Bangladesh.
The framers of the 1973 Constitution were aware of this background. They introduced a federal system of governance, which divided the subjects into federal and concurrent lists, with the latter set to be abolished gradually. But alas this was not to be. The successive governments, both military and civilian, shied away from their constitutional obligations to abolish the concurrent list and devolve subjects contained in it to the federating units. The military rulers, on the contrary, experimented with new governance structures.
The recent example of a flawed local government system introduced by former President Musharraf personifies the dilemmas that faced our successive governments. The protection of the local government system given by the previous government by placing it in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution proverbially made it a federal subject by taking it away from the provincial domain. It was after eight long years that the provincial legislatures got the power to legislate on the subject of local governments. The festering wounds of deprivation felt by the Baloch people are, in a large part, due to lack of political, economic and administrative decentralisation.
It is in this background that abolishing of the concurrent list and devolution of its subjects to the federating units coupled with consensual adoption of the 7th National Finance Commission Award (NFC) needs to be celebrated by all, over and above political divide. A strong and empowered federating units would lead to strong Pakistan. This is the beauty of democracy that it seeks inclusive and consensus-based solutions to the complex and protracted issues, despite being imperfect and noisy.
It is now upon the provincial governments to make the best use of the changed power equation and translate the newly acquired provincial autonomy into direct service and benefits to the people. They need to focus on developing capacity of their respective departments besides imparting training and motivation to its personnel to undertake their responsibilities with full commitment and devotion. They must also ensure the optimum and judicious use of resources, transferred to them under the 7th NFC, by putting in place transparency in the system.