Decentralisation is the statutory granting of powers by the central government of a sovereign state to government at a sub-national level - be it at the local, provincial or regional level.
Decentralisation is heavily supported in the literature of the international financial institutions as it is viewed as a process that disperses decision-making governance to those who are not only more in touch with the specific needs of the communities they belong to and serve but also ensures greater accountability. Why is decentralisation considered appropriate for any government, including Pakistan? Study after study on decentralisation in specific regions, countries, localities reveal that there is a marked improvement in the performance of social sectors subsequent to the implementation of decentralisation policy with only one proviso: that decentralisation is followed in letter and in spirit.
Has Pakistan made any gains with respect to improved performance of the social sectors post-Musharraf's 2001 decentralisation? Unfortunately Pakistan's social sector performance remains poor. The reason, so argue analysts, is the lack of sustained commitment by our governments, past as well as present, to developing sadly deficient sectors that include health and education.
Some statistics are in order. Pakistan's literacy rate is 58 percent and there is general agreement that the definition of literacy needs a revisit for two broad reasons. First, because those who can only sign their names with little or no other reading or writing skills are defined as literate. And second, several analysts maintain that the governments of the past set targets for increasing literacy rates and given that the last census was in 1998 subsequent governments conveniently assumed that the literacy rate increased as per target each year.
Health coverage too is remarkably poor. In 2009, the under five mortality rate was 87 per 1000, incidence of tuberculosis was as high as 231 per 100,000 people - a very high rate in comparison to other countries in the region. In addition, Pakistan had 0.8 physicians per 1000 people, 0.6 nurses and midwives per 1000 people, and 0.6 hospital beds per 1000. So what can be done or is being done to develop these sadly deficient sectors? The answer lies in devolution. Musharraf defined devolution as transfer of powers to an elected local government while the present political dispensation defines devolution as the transference of most of the social sector ministries to the provinces, a component of the 18th Amendment. The question is why has decentralisation failed to improve the quality of life of the people?
Musharraf announced the Devolution of Power Plan in August 2000 and passed the local government ordinance in 2001. He never tired of extolling the virtues of the ordinance and insisted that it was synonymous with grass root genuine democracy that would empower the impoverished. The plan was hailed by Pakistan's major international donors and the World Bank, Asian Development Bank as well as DFID undertook a review on the request of the Musharraf government and made generally supportive comments even though the study's key findings did indicate that much could be improved.
The question is whether this support was merited. Unfortunately, however, the answer has to be in the negative as the primary objective of the entire exercise as revealed during the April 2002 presidential referendum and the October 2002 general elections was to strengthen and not weaken military rule exercised from the centre. Through the ordinance Musharraf blatantly and shamelessly created a pliant pro-military political elite able to make inroads in local politics and displace its traditional civilian adversaries. Provinces thus could and were easily bypassed. Over time, however, analysts are agreed that the non-partisan nature of the Musharraf-led local elections exacerbated ethnic, caste and tribal tensions and undermined the organisational coherence of political parties.
One would not have expected a civilian government in Islamabad to either endorse non-party based local bodies' elections or indeed to allow power to be devolved to the local bodies through bypassing the provincial legislature. Thus it is no wonder that subsequent to the 2008 general elections with the transfer of power to the civilians, a unanimous agreement was reached, enshrined in the 18th Amendment, defining devolution as greater administrative and financial autonomy to the provincial governments. The exception was Sindh where the PPP refrained from restoring the old commissionerate system given MQM support for Musharraf's devolution. With the MQM's announcement that it would leave the coalition the PPP moved quickly to restore the commisionerate system. The timing of the restoration led many to the obvious conclusion: the PPP moved deliberately and quickly to implement a decision that its leadership knew would greatly irk the MQM.
July 1 was hailed by the PPP as the 'provincial autonomy day' and was followed by a range of advertisement support to the print and the electronic media. However, the provinces, including Punjab, expressed concern that even though the functions of the devolved ministries are being transferred however assets and finances are not. Additionally, it is widely acknowledged that the provinces simply do not have the capacity at present to take over the devolved ministries and do them justice. In this context, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif requested the Prime Minister in writing to convene a meeting of the Council of Common Interest (CCI) on the 25th of June. No meeting has been scheduled yet and the Punjab Cabinet has okayed a plan to take the matter to the Supreme Court unless a CCI meeting is convened shortly.
The concerns of the Punjab government appear valid if one looks at the budget 2011-12. The federal government allocated nothing to seventeen devolved ministries in the budget for 2011-12 under the Public Sector Development Programme with the amount saved a mere 17 billion rupees. In other words the devolved ministries were not priority expenditure items by the Centre so savings are small. To further complicate the picture some devolved ministries/divisions are going to be retained by the centre though at this point it is unclear the role that would be effectively played by the Inter Provincial Co-ordination Committee (IPCC). The total budget of this ministry is to rise to 266 million rupees from 48.4 million rupees in 2010-11 with the largest allocation on grants, subsidies and write-offs - from 601,000 rupees in 2010-11 to 196 million rupees in 2011-12. What this entails has not been clarified.
IPCC, according to its website, will act as a "filter" in analysing, debating and resolving issues of common concern by consensus while larger issues would be dealt with by higher constitutional fora like CCI and National Economic Council. The Punjab government, as aforementioned, has requested a CCI meeting. Thus there is a lot to be worked out still and one would have hoped that the government had resolved these issues prior to celebrating the provincial day on July 1.
To conclude, decentralisation must be supported as it brings those who manage/govern social/physical sectors closer to the people they purport to serve. The recent decentralisation has yet to take effect. However, several things need to be worked out. That requires scheduling a CCI meeting. However, with the PPP trying to resolve issues with the MQM subsequent to Dr Mirza's ill-advised and inappropriate statements against the MQM leadership, the government's focus has yet again shifted to politics.
The effectivity of the commissionerate system over Musharraf's local government system depends on how it is implemented. Musharraf's system was not implemented in letter and in spirit as the commissionerate system was not prior to Musharraf's amendment is evident. The flaw is not in the policy or the system but in how it is implemented.