Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect of Pakistan's Civil-Military Imbalance

RCSS Policy Studies 60

llhan Niaz

MANOHAR

U N D E R S T A N D IN G A N D A D D R E SSIN G T H E A D M IN ISTR A TIV E ASPECT O F PAKISTAN’S

CIV IL-M ILITA RY IM BALANCE

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RCSS Policy Studies 60

Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect of Pakistan’s Civil-Military

Imbalance

IL H A N N IA Z

REG IO NA L C EN TR E FO R STRATEGIC STUDIES C O L O M B O

M A N O H A R2015

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C ontents

1. In troduction 72. A Historical Background o f the Civil-M ilitary

Imbalance in Pakistan 133 . Civilian Governments and the M ilitary in Pakistan 234 . M ilitary Regimes and the Exacerbation o f the

C ivil-M ilitary Imbalance 345. The Bureaucratic Leadership and the

C ivil-M ilitary Imbalance 396 . Reforming the Apparatus: W hat Could W ork

in Theory 457 . The Cost in Tim e and Resources 578 . Im plem entation Plan for the Reforms 619 . Identifying and Neutralizing O pposition to Reforms 65

10. Conclusion 71Bibliography 73

C H A P T E R 1

Introduction

The ancient Indian statesman Kautilya realized some 2,300 years ago that the ultim ate basis for state authority was the ability to mobilize and employ superior force (Rangarajan 1992). Ibn Khaldun, the great fourteen th century Arab philosopher-historian, w ould have readily concurred with Kautilya’s analysis had he been aware o f it, for he understood the state as the em bodim en t o f royal authority. Royal authority, in turn , was distinguished from tribal leadership through a chief on account o f the former representing the ability to coerce and compel obedience while, for the latter, the absence o f hierarchically organized instrum ents o f control m eant th a t leadersh ip involved persuasion and lead ing by exam ple (Dawood 1978: 108). In the Turkish sultanates that succeeded the Arab empire o f the Ummayads and Abbasids, as well as in Persia’s empires, the military again was the source o f royal authority. For the O ttom ans, the distinction between askeri, or the martial ruling class drawn from Turkish nobles and the sultan’s slaves, and the reaya, or the flock rep resen ting everyone else, was the m ost im portant distinction as far as the internal affairs o f the sultanate were concerned (Inalcik 2000: 13; Goffman 2002). For the Persians, whether they were led by imperial Achaemenids, tribal Parthians, absolutist Sassanids, theocratic Safavids, modernizing Pahlavis, or the Ayatollahs, the sword was w hat enabled the sceptre to hold sway. Further east, China’s empires presented a somewhat different face for there the M andarins, the world’s first merit-based higher bureaucracy, ran the state and enjoyed pre-em inence over the military officers. Even there, however, dynasties emerged through conquest after periods o f fragmentation, and were only gradually civilianized. T he Japanese shoguns o f the Tokugawa bakufu (‘tent governm ent’) and its emperors after the Meiji Restoration o f 1868 were ostensibly and substantially military rulers who derived their

power from the loyalty o f the army (Gordon 2003; Hiroshi 2006). Even in the US, the attem pt by the South to secede and form a Confederacy (186 0-5 ) was brough t to an end by the superior military power and industrial potential o f the N orth , leading to the bloodiest war in American history. Had the South succeeded in its bid for independence or had the war dragged out for decades, the U S’ exercise in federal republicanism m ight well have given way to a tussle for power between com peting absolutist states. Returning to the very origins o f history as a discipline, H erodotus’ Histories was written as an account o f the Greco-Persian wars (with a large num ber o f digressions) that also served as a warning against the hum an tendency to attribute success to supposed innate virtues w hen it is actually due to favourable circum stances (Rawlinson 1996). Statesmen and scholars would do well in any age to reflect upon the themes o f struggle and success, hubris and nemesis, that underlie Herodotus’ narrative for it explains the hum an condition vis-a-vis the exercise o f power in light o f the deficiencies o f tem peram ent and character inherent in hum an nature.

For our purposes, which are fortunately far more lim ited than Kautilya’s, Ibn Khaldun’s or Herodotus’, it helps to identify the major types o f power equations that have prevailed w ithin states with regard to civil—m ilitary balance and relations. T he term ‘c iv il- military relations’ itself betrays a contem porary and anti-historical bias for it presupposes that the two are, or ought to be, distinct spheres. For almost the entirety o f history, down to the 1970s and 1980s even in the west and south o f Europe, and the 1990s in eastern Europe, as elsewhere in the w orld, this was hardly the case.1

Historically, there are three major configurations o f political order in relation to the role o f the military in a polity.1. The first is the m ilitary state, or a state in which the military

runs the country and is the source o f political and administrative leadership. In such a state, the askeri is deeply enmeshed in the economy, has a veto over im portant decisions, controls foreign and defence policies, and intervenes in the day-to-day politics and adm inistration o f the state. The vast majority o f states in

8 Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect

Introduction 9history would fall into this category as would m any contem porary ones.

2. T he second is the civ ilian-led state , w here the m ilita ry is indispensable to the m aintenance o f political order, territorial integrity, and national security, and also acts as an im portant administrative reserve. In spite o f this, the military is no t openly involved in the politics and adm inistration except in cases where it is deployed by the civilian governm ent. Civilian-led states require militaries to preserve their existence from internal and external threats but do not concede an open role in the political process and adm inistration to their armed forces.

3. The third is the civilian state, in which the military is no t needed to underwrite political order or ensure the preservation o f the state though it can be called out in the event o f an emergency. The m ilitary will still retain a powerful role in foreign policy, intelligence, and defence policy in such states especially when they, like the US and UK, have imperial ambitions that necessitate overseas military deployments. However, even if the entire arm y is sent away to fight a war, the civilian institutions are sufficiently strong and popular to preserve political order.

In the second type o f state, civilian supremacy has to be carefully cultivated w hile in the th ird type it is sustained by pow erful normative influences that have developed gradually in favourable circum stances.2

Pakistan’s experience shows that a state can, at a superficial level, oscillate between one type o f civil-m ilitary equation and another.3 Pakistan started, like India, as a civilian-led state bu t the trajectory o f the two dom inions diverged rapidly and, by O ctober 1958, Pakistan had becom e a m ilitary state. Since 1958, Pakistan has periodically reverted to the semblance o f a civilian-led state though in substantive terms the imbalance has steadily evolved in favour o f the military even when it has not been overtly in power. This imbalance lies in the competence, professionalism, and motivation o f the armed forces relative to the decline o f these qualities on the civilian side o f the state apparatus. C ivilian dispensations, as described below, actually ado p ted policies and strategies th a t

weakened the civilian bureaucracy and aggravated the imbalance in favour o f the m ilitary. Today it can be said w ith ou t fear o f contradiction that the Pakistani military is richer, better organized, more disciplined, and more highly m otivated than all the civilian institutions, which woefully lack in leadership and professionalism. This is not simply a question o f resources; the Pakistani government spends nearly as m uch on keep in g d e lin q u e n t s ta te -o w n ed enterprises (SOEs) afloat as it does on m aintaining the armed forces. M eanwhile, ou t o f the developm ent expenditure, tw o-thirds are dissipated or stolen. Even when resources are granted to them , civilian sectors waste m ost and exacerbate the states liabilities.

A major reason for this is the decline in the quality o f Pakistan’s civilian bureaucracy, at the apex o f which stand the 25 ,000-30 ,000 officers o f the Central Superior Services (CSS). N o government can seriously hope to perform w ithout an able bureaucratic leadership that can control and lead the 2.5-m illion-plus civilian employees o f the state. Rather than cultivating a civil service officer class worth the name, Pakistan’s rulers have treated it arbitrarily, pauperized it so that honest officers can look forward to lives o f real material hardship, and eliminated effective accountability so that the corrupt can act w ith im pun ity and inspire others to follow them . T he consequences are there for all to see in the breakdown o f Pakistan’s civil adm inistration (Niaz 2010). T he police can’t m aintain law and order, the Federal Board o f Revenue (FBR) cannot collect taxes, the judiciary canno t provide tim ely and honest decisions, the corporations designed to provide services loot the taxpayer, health and education are derelict, and developm ent spending fuels corruption rather than improve quality o f life. The state has become so enervated th a t hard bu t necessary decisions, such as ending subsidies and tax rebates, quickly fall prey to agitation and vested interests so that the resulting flip-flopping diminishes the governm ent’s credibility in short order. For now, Pakistan’s m ilitary is content to sit on the sidelines and watch civilians try and fail to deal with the country’s problems. After all, if the balance o f power is naturally shifting in your favour, it makes little sense to be in a hurry.4 The arbitrariness and incompetence o f the civilian leadership continues unabated, their ability to generate resources is dim inish


Introductioning, and dem ographic and econom ic pressures are escalating. In these conditions, the transfer o f power in M ay 2013 from one elected governm ent to another was more a testam ent to military patience than to civilian performance.

This paper has, in this context, two major objectives. T he first is to explain Pakistan’s civil-m ilitary equation and its evolution with the aim o f highlighting how the trajectory evident under the British Raj could not be sustained. T he second is to develop an outsider’s perspective on civil service reforms in Pakistan that seeks to rebuild the state apparatus starting with the civilian officer corps. T he central argum ent is that unless Pakistan takes serious steps in the short and long terms to create a class o f capable and honest civil servants groomed and educated to lead the civilian bureaucracy, the underlying asymmetry in terms o f the quality o f the civilian sectors and military sectors will continue to evolve in favour o f the armed forces.

N O T E S

1. For more on European societies and the relationship with militaries, see Best (1982). The French military system was the most effective until superseded by the Germans in the mid-1800s. The desertion rate in the French army was about 2 per cent in the 1780s while, in contrast, about 18 per cent o f the British army deployed in Ireland deserted every year (ibid.: 33). For an account of developments in Europe over the past seventy years, see Sheehan (2008).

2. For an effective treatment o f such plausible fallacies, see Kaplan (2012), especially the second chapter, ‘The Revenge o f Geography’ (pp. 23—37) and the third chapter ‘Herodotus and his Successors’ (pp. 38-60).

3. One view is that ‘from British colonial rule until 1971, Pakistan has witnessed the evolution of a strong military within an alliance with the country’s bureaucracy. As a result o f numerous internal and external threats and challenges, the bureaucrats became sidelined over time. Under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971-7), though there was some civilian power, all o f this was again just another form o f power-sharing between civilians (this time elected ones) and the armed forces. The succeeding regime o f Zia-ul-Haq seemed to symbolize the ultimate and institutionalized dominance of the military in politics’ (Wolf 2013: 5)

4. At a series o f roundtables on the civil-military imbalance in Pakistan, organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in O ctober- December 2012, the professionalism o f the military and the lack of professionalism o f the civilian side became a running theme. In this context, Lt. Gen. (Retd) Agha Umer Farooq noted: ‘. . . military human resource was well developed while the civilian side was underdeveloped. This weakness of the civilian side is creating problems’ (Farooq 2012).


C H A P T E R 2

A Historical Background of the Civil-M ilitary Imbalance

in Pakistan

In the m id-1800s, Alexis de Tocqueville,1 reflecting on the difficulties faced by France in its efforts to establish a constitutional and representative order, felt pessimistic about the prospects o f a more liberal and hum ane French state materializing any time soon. De Tocqueville’s pessimism sprang from his understanding o f French history and the parallel development o f civilianized constitutional orders in Britain and its dom inions, inclusive o f the now independent U nited States o f America.2 Laws, felt de Tocqueville, could be changed easily enough if a new regime was willing to m uster the majorities and political will needed. After all, in de Tocqueville’s lifetime, the French had repeatedly changed their constitutional and legal frameworks— they had experimented with constitutional m onarchy (1789—91), dem ocratic republicanism (1 7 9 2 -5 ), oligarchic repub lican ism (1795—9), and im perial repub lican ism (1799-1804). It had gone on to experience im perial m onarchy (1804-15), monarchical restoration moderated by constitutionalism (1815-24), monarchical absolutism (1824—30), constitutional m onarchy (1830—48), republicanism (184 8-51 ), and a second bout o f imperial monarchy (1851-70). T he overthrow o f regimes and changes to the formal legal and representative structures of the state had done little to ameliorate the underlying hatreds and passions that anim ated its politics. France continued to be a militaristic, bureaucratic, and arbitrary state, and the French people’s opinion o f the om nipotence o f th a t state m ade absolutism the desired objective o f all contenders. France was thus faced with a constitutional crisis that led to m ilitary interventions in politics and the overthrow o f regimes for more than a century after de

Tocqueville on account o f the m entality o f the French elite, and the habits o f the heart shared by a cross-section o f Frenchm en (Niaz 2014). U ntil France found a way to manage the effects o f its mores on politics, there was little hope that constitutional stability and the rule o f law would prevail in a meaningful sense. Through his research, de Tocqueville attem pted to explain how France’s mores in relation to the exercise o f power had evolved over the longue duree o f history, and influenced the behaviour o f form al state structures, com m unities, and individuals.

The British and their dominions o f settlem ent were, in contrast, quite fo rtunate in their circum stances, wherein the state’s legal structure was far m ore consistent w ith the mores o f the people. T he US was particularly blessed in this regard.3 Its people had brought w ith them the political capital o f representative governm en t partic ipa ted in by taxpayers and a w ealth o f subsidiary practices, such as elected local governm ent, trial by jury, a free judiciary, and a strong tradition o f private property. U nlike the Spanish colonies, where mineral extraction by colonial magnates became the dom inan t source o f wealth and power, the th irteen colonies that rebelled against Britain in 1776 were blessed by being poor in .such resources. To grow, they needed to rely on the ingenuity and enterprise o f their people while the collapsing frontier to the west and the absence o f a stron g co n tin en ta l m ilita ry challenge m eant that expansionism could be pursued w ithout the a ttendant in stitu tional fallout o f in ternal m ilitarization .4 A t the same time, the American colonists were relatively free o f the feudal undergrowth o f the O ld W orld while their tradition o f local self- governm ent m eant th a t unlike the French or Spanish colonies bureaucratic rule through colonial administrators was unnecessary. T he native genius o f these settlers com bined w ith fortuitous circum stances to enable the creation o f an independent federation by 1789 in w hich the form o f governm ent adopted was th a t o f a republic. Like m any em inent Frenchm en, de Tocqueville greatly envied the Anglo-American configuration o f the state as a complex o f autonom ous institutions led by a civilian executive who represented the taxpayers, was restrained by laws, and was accustomed by long habituation to respect the property and liberty o f subjects


Civil-Military Imbalance in Pakistan 15and citizens. The nature o f government com bined with geographic location and geopolitical requirements to ensure that there was no need to maintain large standing armies or organize a field administration dom inated by centrally appointed officials like the intendants o f the O ld Regime and the prefects o f m odern France.

In South Asia, states large and small, ranging from the Mughal em pire to the Sikh kingdom to the R ajput principalities, were organized around their m ilitaries.5 T he ruler was the head o f the army or appointed a chief o f staff. T he m ilitary perform ed a wide range o f functions from assisting in revenue collection to m aintaining law and order, from crushing rebellions and guarding the frontiers to ensuring loyalty to the regime. T he state collected revenues and waged war to feed and gainfully engage its armies. M ore land m eant more wealth and more wealth m eant more soldiers, which in turn m eant even more land and even more wealth.6 The weakening and fragmentation o f the Mughal empire in the early 1700s led to rebellions and invasions that together plunged the region into chaos. South Asian history has alternated between organized militarism by a single dom inant centre during periods o f imperial unity and disorganized m ilitarism by m ultip le actors d u ring periods o f disunity. In South Asia’s case, the periods o f un ity and imperial order are dwarfed by periods o f disunity, warring states, and chaos. This means that the chaotic militarization that has been the fate of much o f the world is also manifest in South Asian history.

In Europe too, the state evolved as a military predator capable o f displacing or containing lesser predators (local barons, feudal high lords) through the creation o f royal armies between the mid- 1400s and mid-1700s (Fukuyama 2012). T he major exception to this rule was, as indicated, the UK, which had a small army that was prim arily deployed overseas w ith additional forces raised as needed and thrown into the C ontinental European theatre as expeditionary forces. This helped consolidate the historical experience of civilian supremacy, a tradition effortlessly inherited by fortunately located dom inions o f settlem ent like Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. T he British em pire in India, however, was a very different case for five major reasons.

First, British India was a densely populated dom inion o f conquest

and lacked a large settler presence. T his m eant th a t territories acquired by force or fraud had to be consolidated by garrisoning, a perm anent colonial bureaucracy, and pacts w ith local notables. Should the m ilitary pow er th a t u n derp inned British Ind ia be weakened or the standing army be disbanded, the Indian territories would spin out o f control. Like the Great Mughals or other South Asian dynasties, it was the army that created and m aintained the empire (Niaz 2010; M oon 1989).

Second, the d issolu tion o f the M ughal em pire in to a large num ber o f successor principalities and kingdoms m eant that South Asia was once again subjected to warring states that vied with each other for survival and supremacy. British India emerged as one of these w arring states follow ing its u su rpation o f residual state authority in Bengal from its nawabs, in 1757. T he conversion o f Bengal into an imperial territory drew the British into the m ultifaceted struggle for Mughal imperial succession. It also m eant that British enclaves in Bom bay and M adras allowed expansion in different parts o f India. The contest with the Marathas, the Sikhs, and others like the princely state o f Mysore m eant that w ithout a strong army British India would be invaded and conquered and probably cease to exist (Major 1996).

Third, warring states within South Asia were themselves subjected to frequent invasions from the northwest. The Persians, under Nadir S hah ,7 and assorted A fghans u n d e r w arlords and kings, took advantage o f breakdown o f the Mughal military machine that had held them at bay for a century and a half and poured in to the region (Axworthy 2009). These invasions had a profoundly unsettling effect; by preventing the advent o f a stable balance o f power (along European lines), they made it much more challenging for one o f the Indian warring states to restore im perial unity.8 T he British Indian arm y was thus a player in a continental cycle of struggle and exhaustion exposed to sudden death by external invasion and an integral factor in the long-term strategic calculations o f the ascendant colonial regime.

Fourth, the indigenous tradition o f governance, in which the m ilitary played a vital if no t central role as political arbiter and adm inistrative instrum ent, was deeply rooted w ith m illennia o f


Civil—Military Imbalance in Pakistan 17history behind it. Distance and climate m eant that the bulk o f the Indian army was recruited from locals who shared the traditional perception o f military power and organization (Niaz 2006; 2010). In that traditional perception, rebelling against a weak ruler who suffered military defeats or a sovereign who acted against the army’s m aterial interest or religious m ooring, was perfectly acceptable. T he British Indian state, created and sustained by the sword, had to guard against the possibility o f insurrection.

Fifth and final, the civil adm inistration o f British India took nearly a century to assume the familiar shape o f a merit-based higher and m edian bureaucracy strong enough to civilianize the adm inistration in most o f the country. Even then, there were exceptions. Frontier regions, such as those along the northwest, were turbulent and prone to rebellion; these had to be quaran tined th rough a com bination o f special administrative arrangements and garrisoning by military and paramilitary forces. In areas that served as major recruiting grounds o f the military, such as Awadh before 1857 and the Punjab afterwards, the level o f social m ilitarization was far higher.

These challenges need to be borne in m ind w hen addressing the developm ent o f civilian supremacy and a civilian-led state in British India. It is one th ing to develop civilian suprem acy in conditions that obviate the need for a large standing army on home soil am idst a society that has developed a large num ber o f autonomous and representative institutions formally incorporated into a legitimate constitutional order. It is quite another to build, operate, and eventually transfer the structure and ethos o f a civilian-led state in geographic and dem ographic conditions that necessitate the maintenance o f a standing army at home, amidst a society that evolved political and adm inistrative practices and socioeconomic institutions that operate counter to the requirements for constitutional order.

T he British understood their dom inion over India, like that of earlier and con tem porary rulers, was based on force. T hom as M unro, writing on 22 November 1813, reflected that the Cornwallis- era reforms had caused confusion and delay on account o f the lack o f trust they betrayed in the Ind ian popu la tion as well as the

m ism atch th a t resu lted from th e ju d ic ia l o r ie n ta tio n o f the adm inistration in which supervision o f the police and all powers of magistracy were transferred to the judiciary (Selection o f Papers from the Records at the East India House). It was increasingly, as well as embarrassingly, evident th a t it was unwise to ‘consider English maxims as always applicable to India’ and that the proper course was ‘to follow those rules’ th a t were ‘m ost applicable’ in local circum stances (112). T he key to doing this was to concentrate field adm inistration in the hands o f collector-magistrates who would also enjoy supervisory jurisdiction over the local police force. Like the intendants o f O ld Regime France, such officials would be able to redress grievances on the spot and wield sufficient coercive power to ensure paym ent o f land taxes— the m ost im portant source o f revenue at the time. By establishing the dom inance o f a class o f elite civilian administrators at the grass roots and gradually civiliani- zing the police, the state would be able to ‘disguise the principle o f its support’, which was superior m ilitary force (187).

W hile reforms in the 1820s and 1830s established the resilient pattern o f civil adm inistration still recognizable today in India and Pakistan, the British proved astonishingly insensitive when it came to managing their predom inantly Indian military forces. The growing presence o f Christian missionaries, defeat at the hands o f the Afghans, changes to enlistm ent and deploym ent conditions that contravened caste H indu restrictions on m ovem ent beyond the Indus, cartridges lined with animal fat, and the annexation of Awadh, which was the home o f m any o f the soldiers in the Bengal army, com bined to underm ine loyalty to the British. T he 1857 rebellion shook the British Indian state hard; the uprising was ultimately crushed but, in its aftermath, a new set o f policies was introduced w ith regard to the m ilitary (Trench 1988: 11-25).

Q ueen V ictoria’s Proclam ation o f 1 Novem ber 1858 p u t the brakes on official patronization o f missionary activity9 while the Army Com m ission in its reports laid ou t policy for prom otions and recruitm ent. P rom otion, originally based on favour-seeking and the subjective opinions o f superior officers, was to be professionalized through a system o f internal examinations. Examinations would be employed to gauge m erit and ranking in the m erit list


Civil-Military Imbalance in Pakistan 19would entitle officers to prom otions. U p to the rank o f Regiment M ajor, p ro m o tio n w ould d ep en d p rim arily on perfo rm an ce evaluation and examination. For the rank o f Regiment M ajor and above, the candidate would have to pass an exam ination and be certified by the Com m ander-in-C hief as ‘qualified in every respect’ (IAC 1859: 14). T hus, in case the senior-m ost officer on the regimental list failed an examination for prom otion, ‘the next senior qualified officer should succeed to the vacancy’ (14). In this manner, prom otions w ould proceed m ore or less autom atically based on seniority, which entitled officers to prom otion, and m erit, determ ined by qualifying examination. Even opponents o f the seniority- based system, w ho argued th a t it w ould im pede efficiency and slow down the prom otion o f brilliant officers, were constrained to adm it th a t it m inim ized favouritism (16). W hile the arm y was professionalized, it was imperative that the police be modernized at the same tim e and made a prim arily civilian force capable o f handling day-to-day law and order problem s and thus obviating the need to deploy the army for internal security in all bu t the most turbulent frontier regions o f India (21). As a further check on arbitrary transfers within the army in peace time, officers were not to be withdrawn from their regiments ‘w ithout first passing an exam ination’ to determ ine their aptitude for the new assignment (17). Indian soldiers were now to be recruited primarily from the agricultural castes o f northern India and the Bengal arm y was to be cut down to size and eventually replaced by recruits from the Punjab and the Rajputana (27—30). T he new recruitm ent policy m eant that the northwest o f British India, including core areas of the future state o f Pakistan, became the major source o f manpower for the Indian army— a relatively homogenous ‘garrison state’ within a m uch larger and m ore heterogeneous civilian-led state (Yong 2005).

T hat civilian-led state steadily developed an array o f autonom ous and sem i-au tonom ous civilian in s titu tio n s ranging from local governm ents dom inated by taxpayers to public service com m issions, a m odern superior judiciary, professional associations, civil society organizations, political parties, and, after 1919, elected provincial governm ents.10 T he policy o f Indianization o f the All-

20 Understanding and Addressing the Administrative AspectIndia Services (AIS) and the Indian military officer corps adopted in the 1920s m eant that, by the 1950s, m ost high officials and m ilitary officers w ould be Indian— a prospect that hardly boded well for hanging on to India by repression.11 These reforms, whether read as cynical a ttem p ts to p ro lo n g im peria l life expectancy or genuine m anifestations o f the civilizing m ission desired by Macaulay, had the effect o f providing the political order in India with a representative character. This was strengthened by a matrix o f civilian institutions that worked w ithin that order and pushed it to further modify itself in light o f growing political consciousness and demands for self-governance. In the northwest o f British India, however, the rate o f political developm ent was m uch slower and its character m ore haphazard. Balochistan and large parts o f the N orthw est F rontier Province were under indirect rule by tribal elites reinforced by political agents and m ilitary garrisons (Shah 2007: 9 -3 8 ). In the Punjab, political developm ent was greater but a conservative alliance o f landlords dom inated politics and was in a position to control local political allegiances. In Sindh, the landed and spiritual Muslim elite was in a similar position, though the presence o f a large H indu com m unity m eant that its political dominance at the provincial level was not as secure as for its Punjabi counterpart. Inferior westernization experience, a conservative socioeconomic profile in which military recruitm ent and parasitic landlordism played a vital role, and strategic vulnerability necessitating deploym ent o f m ilitary forces— all these m eant that if these territories were to be separated from India, the new state would inherit a relatively hom ogenous arm y that was recruited from a central area and elevated to pre-eminence on account o f geopolitical constraints.12T he chaotic and mismanaged Partition o f India, which went wrong at the planning stage, plunged the region into a com m unal holocaust, left a bitter legacy o f India-Pakistan animosity, placed the Pakistani government in a predicam ent with tough decisions to be taken, and catalysed the undoing o f civilian supremacy (Umar Ali 2012).

N O T E SCivil—Military Imbalance in Pakistan 21

1. For what is perhaps the greatest work on the causes of the French Revolution, see deTocqueville (1998).

2. A fine biography that explains the influences on de Tocqueville’s evolution as an intellectual, see Jardin (1988).

3. States de Tocqueville: ‘. . . All the general principles on which modern constitutions rest, principles which most Europeans in the seventeenth century scarcely understood and whose dominance in Great Britain was then far from complete, are recognized and given authority by the laws of New England; the participation o f the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility of government officials, individual freedom, and trial by jury— all these things were established w ithout question and with practical effect’ (deTocqueville 2000: 39).

4. The situation in Europe was very different from American circumstances’ that were ‘conducive to liberty’, which included ‘plentiful opportunities for moderate wealth, which gives men a concrete interest in liberty; the open frontier, which provides a safety valve against conflict; and the lack o f foreign enemies, which reduces the need for a strong state’ and standing army stationed on home soil (Meskill 2007: 119).

5. The Mughal army numbered, ‘exclusive o f the soldiers that are allowed’ to the faujdars, zamindars and tax collectors, 200,000 cavalry, and 40,000 infantry inclusive o f musketeers and artillery (Allami 1873; 2003: 233). The total strength, including all forces under the control o f the zamindars and faujdars\s given as 4.4 million.

6. ‘From wealth (kosa) comes the power of the Government (danda). W ith the treasury and the army the earth is acquired with the treasury as the ornament’: Kautilya, TheArthashastra (Rangarajan 1992:244).

7. Nadir Shah tried to support his army through plunder. His signature success in this effort came in the 1739 invasion o f India. Delhi was taken, and wealth amounting to 700 million rupees (nearly 90 million pounds sterling in the currency o f the day) was looted and brought back to Persia enabling the conqueror to declare a three-year tax holiday.

8. Repeated invasions, for instance, delayed the formation of a new state in the Indus region for nearly a century after the death o f the last o f the Great Mughals in 1707. The Sikh kingdom under Maharaja Ranjit Singh was barely consolidated through the liquidation o f‘all the misls and principalities in the Punjab under his control’ when he died in 1839 triggering another round o f civil wars and invasions that ended with the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849 (Singh 2001: 156). The Sikh army, or Khalsa, grew in

size and turbulence in the years after Ranjit Singh’s death and became dominant over the Lahore darbar.

9. ‘We disclaim alike the Right and the Desire to impose our Convictions on any o f our Subjects’ and government servants are instructed to abstain from proselytizing ‘on pain of O ur highest displeasure’ {Proclamation by the Queen in Council to the Princes, Chiefs, and People o f India, published in India at Allahabad on 1 November 1858).

10. The rift between Curzon and Kitchener over whether the military member o f the vice-regal council should be replaced by a member o f Council of Finance and Stores (who could either be a civilian or a military officer of major general rank, in the latter case, he could expect no further promotion) is covered in detail in Pollock (2002: 297—326). The controversy was decided in Kitchener’s favour by the civilian authorities in London.

11. For the policy o f Indianization reference the military and the civil service and early progress, see Report o f the Indian Sandhurst Committee, 14 November 1926 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1927) and Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform, Session 1933—34, vol. I, part I (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1934).

12. During World War II, the Indian army grew from 189,000 in 1939 to2.5 million in 1945. The officer corps expanded from 1000 to 15,740 during the same period. About 8 million men were mobilized for war-related functions, 5 million were engaged by the war and war-related industries, and 1 million joined the Indian Railways to keep comm unications and logistics running (Mason 1974: 495, 511).


C H A P T E R 3

Civilian Governments and the Military in Pakistan

Between A ugust 1947 and April 1953, Pakistan had a civilian government that drew its strength primarily from the ranks o f the Muslim League, which dom inated the first C onstituent Assembly. In M arch—April 1953, the civilian dispensation lost ground to the bureaucracy and army on account o f its m ishandling o f the anti- Ahmedi agitation.1 This agitation had effected disturbances in the Punjab, the im position o f martial law in Lahore, the dismissal of the Punjab governm ent, and the fall o f Prim e M inister Khwaja Nazim uddin, on 17 April 1953. These dates are im portant because it was not until 1955 that military and economic assistance from the US started to materialize. This aid no doubt helped the civil service e lite (and th e arm y) con so lida te pow er and w ield it uninterrupted until M arch 1969,2 bu t it did not cause the demise o f the civilian political leadership as an effective force (Tudor 2013). The reasons for the destabilization o f the relationship between the politicians and the civilian-military elite lie in the chaotic circumstances o f Pakistan’s emergence as an independent state and the hard decisions the situation forced upon M oham m ad Ali Jinnah and the Premier Liaquat Ali Khan (August 1947-O ctober 1951).

In its early days, Pakistan faced an acute shortage o f civil and military personnel, a large refugee crisis, the disruption o f adm inistration in im portant parts o f the country, and a rapid deterioration in its relationship with India on account o f the crisis o f British imperial succession drawing the two dominions into rivalry over the accession o f princely states, w ith Kashmir being param ount. The Pakistani leadership responded to these challenges and moved to rapidly rebuild the army and bureaucracy and restore the authority o f the state. This m eant that political concerns, such as the critical

task of framing a new Constitution or tolerating provincial autonomy, took a back seat to administrative rehabilitation, fiscal centralization, and diversion o f all possible resources to m ilitary security. W ith regard to the last, the leadership allocated 6 0 -7 0 per cent o f budgetary resources to the military while embarking on a policy of nationalization o f the armed forces.3

T he nationalization o f the armed forces was designed to dispense w ith British officers retained after 1947 and replace them w ith Pakistanis by 1 January 1951. British officers were no t considered reliable and the refusal o f the C o m m an der-in -C hief, G eneral Douglas Gracey, to send Pakistani troops into Kashmir underscored their lack o f com m itm ent to obeying the new political leadership. Reliable or not, Pakistan needed 4,000 officers for its armed forces but had only 2,000, making the 500 British officers retained vital to the cohesion o f the military. N um erical shortfalls aside, there were no high-ranking Muslim officers who opted for Pakistan in August 1947. This m eant that the decision o f the political leadership to rapidly replace British officers w ould require quick promotions. Liaquat Ali Khan personally took charge o f this process in his capacity as Defence Minister, PM, and chairman o f the Defence Com m ittee o f the Cabinet (DCC). T he com m ittee formed by the cabinet to report on the nationalization o f the armed forces was confident that the army would meet the set deadline though the technical branches needed more tim e. Rapid prom otions m eant that the British Indian policy o f gradualism had to be abandoned. Officers w ith platoon-level experience found themselves elevated to regimental com m and within two or three years while those with regimental com m and rose to divisional and strategic levels in the same duration. Ayub Khan’s rise from a colonel in August 1947 to army chief on 17 January 1951, when Gracey retired, was a direct outcome o f this policy. Another was the dissatisfaction among those who felt left ou t o f the prom otions bonanza or failed to get the assignments they desired. A few o f these malcontents, led by M ajor General Akbar Khan and inspired by M arxist utopianism, conspired to overthrow the governm ent and carry ou t a bloody revolution bu t were found out in time (Zaheer 1998: 249-50).

Ayub K han’s subsequent role in bring ing dow n the civilian


politicians and becoming the major power player in the governing corporation o f civil servants, m ilitary officers, p liant politicians, and collaborationist judges that would rule Pakistan between 1953 and 1969, has been criticized w ith justification .4 O ne po in t on which Ayub Khan deserves praise is that after the nationalization o f the army was complete he allowed the internal prom otion and discipline processes to reset as m uch as they could in a m anner consistent w ith the tradition o f the British Indian arm y (Khan 1963). T he exception to this was the post o f the army chief itself, which was politicized, first on account o f hasty nationalization, and later as the governor-general granted Ayub Khan extensions and eventually drew him in to the cabinet (O ctober 1954). The stability in the army’s top echelons m eant that Ayub Khan could qu ie tly p rom o te like-m inded officers and becom e personally identified as the perennial leader o f the m ilitary. T he contrast between the increasing stability and rising professionalism o f the military with the rudderless and cynical behaviour o f the political elite shifted public opinion in favour o f the former. T he political leadership never recovered from decapitation following Liaquat Ali Khan’s assassination in October 1951. Factionalism in the Muslim League-—which was a serious problem even while Jinnah lived— burst ou t into the open. Politicians seemed to have plenty o f aspiring na tio nal leaders b u t lacked real leadersh ip . T h e ir dem ocratic legitim acy was also runn in g o u t for the m em bers o f the first Constituent Assembly were elected in 1946 on the basis o f limited franchise, and had sat since August 1947 w ithout form ulating a C o n stitu tio n . I t wasn’t u n til M arch 1949 th a t an O bjectives Resolution was passed; even then, debates over basic principles continued well into 1953, when the PM was overthrown.5 W hile Ayub Khan stayed put between January 1951 and O ctober 1958, seven PMs and three governor-generals came and went. G ranting the army chief extensions, consulting him on matters o f national importance, drawing him into foreign policy, inducting him into the cabinet, allowing relaxation on privatization o f cantonm ent lands, and patronizing the military through shares in agricultural schem es— these were just som e o f the tricks used by G hulam M uham m ad and Iskander M irza to keep the arm y happy and

Civilian Governments and the Military in Pakistan 2 5

supportive o f their civilian coup-making. It is a testament to Ayub Khan’s patience as well as to the psychological inhibitions inherited from British India that the army waited until after President Iskander Mirza abrogated the Constitution and declared martial law in order to avert elections scheduled for early 1959, to directly assume power.

The next civilian government did not materialize until December 1971 and that too after the secession o f East Pakistan and its re- emergence as Bangladesh forced the m ilitary regime led by Yahya K han to step dow n. Z ulfiqar Ali B hutto , a form er associate o f Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan who broke away from the latter to form a left-wing Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) in 1967 and led his party to victory in West Pakistan, took over as President and civilian C hief Martial Law Adm inistrator (CMLA). W ith the secession o f the east wing following the defeat and surrender o f the Pakistan army at Dhaka, Bhutto emerged as the first democratically elected leader to assume power in Pakistan’s history (Zaheer 1994). The PPP had a great opportunity to restore the pre-1953 equation and reassert civilian suprem acy— the m ilitary had been discredited, the public wanted change, the government enjoyed genuine popularity and had the mandate to pursue its own policies. Few would have predicted that the PPP government would be overthrown by 1977 and the army would intervene and stay in power for eleven years under General Zia-ul Haq’s dictatorial rule.6 T he Zia regime’s legacy, in term s o f its success in realign ing Pakistani society, economy, ideology, and polity towards the right, is by far the most significant feature o f contem porary Pakistani history.

In managing the civil—military relationship, Bhutto made four m ajor miscalculations at a policy level, owing to his perspective that the army, the civil service, as well as the private sector were in league against dem ocracy in general and his go vernm en t in particular. T he first was the decision that it was necessary for the government to show the civil servants who the boss was, via purges, demotions, and transfers o f thousands o f officials while filling the civilian bureaucracy with thousands more political appointees. The second was the hasty and poorly planned nationalization o f private industrial, com m ercial, and educational concerns, starting w ith large-scale enterprises bu t eventually engulfing small and m edium


businesses and organizations as well. The third was the creation of a Federal Security Force (FSF) that answered to Bhutto, had the numerical strength o f a division, and acted as a Praetorian guard. The fourth was buying off the military with pay increases, plots,and a share o f the nationalized industrial units, while seeking themost obsequious and incom petent general to fill the post o f C hief o f A rm y S taff (C O A S).7 Taken together, these m iscalculations rapidly altered the political clim ate in the country in favour o f m ilitary in terven tion .8

The assault on the civil service structure broke its back, as Bhutto had promised, and reduced it to a servile instrum ent subjected to arbitrary interference by the political class on a day-to-day basis.9 W hile professionalism and integrity became difficult to m aintain under the weight o f purges, arbitrary transfers, political appointments, and illegal orders, Pakistan’s productive assets were seizedand placed under the control o f the governm ent and its ineptservants with lasting consequences for industrial productivity and economic developm ent.10 T he FSF was widely and accurately seen as a political police and its existence underm ined the democratic credentials o f the governm ent, w hich opted to keep emergency laws such as the Defence o f Pakistan Rules in place, and deprived the regular police o f resources and reforms that it desperately needed. Finally, the strategy o f buying o ff the m ilitary, w hile B hutto pulverized the civilian sectors o f the state and economy into submission, backfired w hen Zia-ul Fiaq was made COAS, superseding seven senior generals. Bhutto was convinced by Zia’s sycophantic dem eanour that audaciously elevating him to the post o f COAS on political grounds would render the military subservient. Instead, after the M arch 1977 elections, protests broke out against rigging and the army carried out a coup on 5 July, overthrowing the governm ent.

T he civilian governm ents th a t ro ta ted in and o u t o f power between 1988 and 1999 were ill-equipped to deal w ith a civ il- military equation that had tilted dramatically in the military’s favour under Bhutto and Zia. At a constitutional level, Zia had, via the E ighth A m endm ent, rigged the po litical process to allow the President to dismiss the government and dissolve assemblies as he

Civilian Governments and the Military in Pakistan 27

2 8 Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspectsaw fit. D uring the 1990s, Pakistan experienced two constitutional civilian coups (1990, 1996), one abortive civilian coup (1993), one recessed m ilitary coup (1993), and one open m ilitary coup (1999). Presidents G hulam Ishaq Khan (1988-93) and Farooq A hm ad Leghari (199 3-7 ) sent two PPP governm ents and one Pakistan M uslim League—Nawaz (PM L-N) governm ent packing. In the case o f the PM L-N governm ent’s dismissal in 1993, the Suprem e C o u rt in tervened to restore the governm ent, w hich triggered a behind-the-scenes military intervention that sent both the government and the President home. T he PM L-N returned to power in the 1996 elections w ith a tw o-thirds m ajority in the lower house, and set about trying to create a prim e m inisterial dictatorship legitimized by divine sanction. Among the highlights o f this process were the storming o f the Supreme C ourt building, the dismissal o f the COAS and the President, and preparations for passing a Shariat Bill to enable the PM to rule as the com m ander o f the faithful. General Karam at’s dismissal and replacem ent by General Pervez M usharraf was particularly fateful. W hen the PM attem pted to dismiss M usharraf on 12 O ctober 1999, after the falling ou t over Kargil, the arm y intervened and overthrew the governm ent.

T he next restoration o f democracy took place between February and August 2008. A t the centre, a PPP-led coalition government, which also led governments in Sindh and Balochistan, took power. D uring its tenure, Pakistan’s civil-m ilitary imbalance continued to evolve in the latter’s favour owing to gross incom petence and corruption on part o f the former. The PPP’s strategy for survival was essentially to buy off rivals and increase the sense o f entitlem ent in the public sector so th a t the governm ent could p lunder in peace." Tax collection fell from 11 per cent o f the gross domestic product (GDP) (under Musharraf) to 8.2 per cent o f the G D P by 2013. The power crisis, inherited from the M usharraf regime, was allowed to deteriorate to the point where most o f the country had power connections bu t no electricity or natural gas. Surveys repeatedly dem onstrated that Pakistan’s youth was pro-military and pro-religious, and disdained democracy and the existing national leadership.12 T he runn ing battle w ith the judiciary, which over

stepped by taking notice o f purely executive matters, led to a practice o f non-com pliance, in which thousands o f court orders collected dust while the executive simply ignored them . T he governm ent failed to develop an anti-terrorism policy and reduced the civilian police to a W I P protection and protocol force, while effectively handing over swathes o f the country to local notables, ethnic and religious parties, and leaving the military to take the lead in fighting insurgents. T he m ilitary itself was, as earlier, bought off by the familiar tem ptations— extensions for the army chief, plum jobs for retired military officers, ignorance o f the accumulation o f land and capital by military-owned enterprises, and increases in the military budget. Betw een 2008 and 20 1 3 , the price tag in dom estic borrowing for the PPP’s survival strategy was about 8,600 billion rupees.13 It is under these circumstances that, in M ay 2013, the general election resulted in a transfer o f power from one elected government to another. No doubt a historic achievement, the new government formed by the PM L-N at the centre inherits a tragic situation in which systemic breakdown on the civilian side has reinforced the military’s position as Pakistan’s only m odern, functional institution. T ha t said, the m ilitary has also played an im portant role in opportunistically and short-sightedly aggravating the civil- military imbalance in its own favour.

NOTES

1. The Report o f the Court o f Inquiry Constituted under Punjab Act II o f1954 to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of1953 (Lahore: Government Printing Press, Punjab, 1954) found that the religious leaders of practically all sects regarded other sects as non-Muslims: ‘The genuineness o f the fatwa, Ex. D. E. 13, by the Deobandis which says that Asna Ashari Shias are kafirs and murtadds, was questioned in the course of enquiry, but Maulana Muhammad Shafi made an inquiry on the subject from Deoband, and received from the records of that institution the copy of a fatwa signed by all the teachers of the Darul Uloom including Maulana Muhammad Shafi himself which is to the effect that those who do not believe in the sahabiyyat of Hazrat Siddiq Akbar and who are qazif of Hazrat Aisha Siddiqa and have been guilty of tehrif of Q uran are kafirs. This opinion is also supported by Mr. Ibrahim Ali

Civilian Governments and the Military in Pakistan 29

Chishti who has studied and knows his subject. He thinks the Shias are kafirs because they believe that Hazrat Ali shared the prophethood with our Holy Prophet. He refused to answer the question whether a person who being a Sunni changes his view and agrees with the Shia view would be guilty o f irtidad so as to deserve the death penalty. According to the Shias all Sunnis are kafirs, and Ahl-i-Qur‘an; namely, persons who consider hadith to be unreliable and therefore not binding, are unanimously kafirs and so are all independent thinkers. The net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty o f death if the Government o f the State is in the hands o f the party which considers the other party to be kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to judge o f the consequences o f this doctrine when it is remembered that no two ulama have agreed before us as to the definition of a Muslim. If the constituents o f each of the definitions given by the ulama are given effect to, and subjected to the rule o f “combination and permutation” and the form o f charge in the Inquisition’s sentence on Galileo is adopted mutatis mutandis as a model, the grounds on which a person may be indicted for apostasy will be too numerous to count.’

2. Yahya Khan’s military regime, which took over from Ayub Khan in March 1969, disassociated itself from the civil service elite thereby ending the civilian-military bureaucratic combine that had ruled the country since April 1953.

3. 1949, File No. 173/CF/49, Government o f Pakistan, Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, ‘Nationalisation Committee’s Report’.

4. In contrast, between 1951 and 1958, Pakistan ran through seven prime ministers (Liaquat Ali Khan, Khwaja Nazimuddin, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Chaudhry Mohammad Ali, I. Chundrigar, H.S. Suhrawardhy, Feroze Khan Noon). For a solid historical treatment o f this political turbulence, see Afzal (2011: 95-141).

5. The failure o f the All-India Muslim League to evolve into a stable governing party after Pakistan came into existence had a lot to do with its preindependence structure and politics. As Afzal (2013) establishes with absolutely clarity in A History o f the All India Muslim League, the League was riddled with factionalism and leg-pulling and it was Jinnah’s centralizing authority that barely kept the party together. W ith independence achieved, Jinnah’s passing away removed the charismatic glue that kept the League in one piece.

6. One observer who would not have been surprised at all by the turn o f events


Civilian Governments and the Military in Pakistan 31was Sir Morrice James, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan in the 1960s: ‘Bhutto as an adult had in him a tendency to harbour resentments, a temperamental leaning towards excess, and a streak of cruelty . . . I believe that at heart he lacked a sense of the dignity and value o f other people . . . I sensed in him a ruthlessness and a capacity for ill-doing which went beyond what is natural. . . . Despite his gifts I judged that one day Bhutto would destroy himself. . . . In 1965,1 so reported in one of my last dispatches from Pakistan as British High Commissioner. I wrote by way o f clinching the point that Bhutto was born to be hanged’ (James 1993: 73—5). Bhutto was hanged for conspiracy to commit murder in April 1979.

7. Lt. General Gul Hassan reflects in his memoirs on the times he helped bail out Brigadier Zia-ul Haq (later Pakistan’s military ruler). In 1970, Zia-ulHaq had received a ‘stinking’ annual assessment from his Commanding Officer (General Nawazish Ali). O n Gul Hassan’s intervention General Hamid suppressed the negative report. ‘I had helped Zia-ul Haq not because he was related to me in anyway (mercifully), but because he had served under me direcdy and I was prone to taking care o f my subordinates. Litde did I know that in the process o f extending help to Zia-ul Haq, I would eventually be inflicting him upon Pakistan’ (Khan 1993). Given how little sympathy Gul Hassan had for Bhutto or the PPP, his views on Zia-ul Haq indicate that Zia was not fit to be promoted above the rank o f Brigadier. No doubt, Zia must have been a very good subordinate to get Gul Hassan to intervene on his behalf.

8. Mubashir Hassan, part of the original cohort of Bhutto loyalists who resigned on 17 August 1974 (from the position o f finance minister), warned in his letter o f resignation ‘that the increasing degree o f state control over the economy was a sure invitation to the military to intervene and the road to disaster.’ Characteristically, Bhutto ignored the sane advice and refused to believe that anyone was even capable of resigning from a position of power (Hassan 2000: 256).

9. The single largest purge occurred on 12 M arch 1972, when about 2,000 federal civil servants were dismissed or demoted under Martial Law Regulation-114. The second purge took place on 18 March 1972, and involved the dismissal of about 500 provincial civil servants. The third purge took place on 18 April 1972, and resulted in the dismissal of 24 judicial officers. The fourth purge occurred on 20 April 1972, and saw eight Intelligence Bureau officers dismissed. The fifth purge took place on 19 August 1973, when eight federal secretaries, one additional secretary, and seven joint secretaries, were retired on the Prime M inister’s verbal orders. The sixth purge, carried out in January 1975, saw the dismissal

of two federal secretaries, three additional secretaries, four joint secretaries, and one deputy secretary. O n 16 October 1976, in order to set the bureaucracy in compliance mode for the forthcoming elections, 174 civil servants were purged. Bhutto was planning another purge for after the March 1977 elections but was overthrown before it materialized. Against these purges, 5,476 political appointments were made to Grade 16 and above, with 2,800 in the federal government and the rest in the provinces. Bhutto wanted a bureaucracy that was personally loyal to him at any cost. For more, see the White Paper on the Performance o f the Bhutto Regime, vol. II, Treatment of Fundamental State Institutions (Islamabad: Printing Corporation o f Pakistan Press, 1979), pp. 122-44.

10. The declassified record of Bhutto’s own government reveals as much on practically every score, leaving aside the White Papers released by the Zia regime after Bhutto’s overthrow in July 1977. Thus, relentless political interference in the day-to-day operation of the police was found to be the major reason for the decline in the quality o f policing and the nosedive in the public perception o f the law enforcement agencies (Report o f the Subcommittee on Law and Order 1976 [Islamabad: Governm ent o f Pakistan Press], p. 15). The Bhutto governm ent’s over-spending, which had sent government expenses soaring to 25 per cent o f the G D P against tax collection o f 13 per cent o f GDP, while in 1974—5 there had been only 34 prosecutions for income tax evasions {Federal Taxes Administration Report, 1975—7 6 [Islamabad: Central Board o f Revenue, 1977], p. 7). The government touted numerical increases in the number o f tax payers but this was largely a result of the nationalization of private enterprises and the conversion o f their employees and managers into state employees whose salaries were paid from public funds and were taxed at the source.

11. Transparency International estimated that, in its tenure, the PPP-led government presided over and engaged in plunder worth approximately 180 billion dollars while the government-appointed chairman o f the National Accountability Bureau conceded that daily corruption was between Rs. 10 and 12 billion (100-20 million dollars) ( The News 20\3a).

12. For more on this, see Siddiqa (2011). W hat Siddiqa’s study found was that there were few substantive differences between the opinions o f Pakistani youth studying in expensive private sector institutions and those o f the general population. Thus, for instance, 88 per cent considered Islam their primary identity, 70 per cent regarded it correct to have Islam as the basis for a system o f governance, 60 per cent supported the government in


Civilian Governments and the Military in Pakistan 33that it was right to consider Ahmedis non-Muslims, and 18 per cent saw Shias as non-Muslims as well. The military was by far the most trusted institution while politicians were seen, with the exception of Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), as corrupt and unworthy.For more, see Gishkori (2013a).

C H A P T E R 4

Military Regimes and the Exacerbation o f the Civil-M ilitary Imbalance

For the vast majority o f Pakistan’s elected representatives, elections are the m eans to gain ascendancy over the state apparatus and leverage transient political power to extract lasting material benefit for themselves and their supporters. Professionalism, merit, rule o f law, procedural regularity, impartiality, conflicts o f interest, careful analyses o f problems, form ulation o f policies and so on are alien notions that hold little meaning to the political class. T he pressures o f party politics, blind loyalty to the party leader, advancement o f sectarianism, interests o f kin, tribe, and caste are, on the other hand, what m atter in the actual calculus o f decision-making. From this bleak prim ordial perspective, the state machinery is merely an in strum ent to direct disproportionate benefit to one’s own self and to penalize rivals. Given the pervasiveness o f this mentality, it is unsurprising that elected governments in Pakistan are outright hostile to any serious attem pt to reduce their arbitrary power over2.5 m illion civilian state employees. Shahbaz Sharif, the C h ief Minister o f the Punjab, now serving a th ird term, sincerely believes that it is his duty to roam around the province, proverbial whip in hand, punishing errant officials w ith arbitrary transfers. After all, this approach worked 1,400 years ago during the caliphate, so it should w ork now as well.1 The arbitrary transfer is thus the principal weapon in the hands o f politicians and they exploit it to secure desired favours from the state and coerce compliance from their bureaucratic underlings and accomplices. For practically all o f them, Bhutto’s arbitrary and personalized approach towards management o f state servants is the ideal to aspire towards; the connection between this and Bhutto’s downfall is entirely lost on Pakistan’s political class.

Military Regimes and the Exacerbation 35Pakistan’s tragedy is no t that the politicians don’t understand

what a m odern state is or ought to do— in this they are no different from their counterparts in other south Asian countries.2 T he tragedy is that w hen the m ilitary took power, it also proved hostile to bureaucratic autonomy, to professionalism, to esprit de corps. This is som ewhat m ore surprising given th a t the Pakistani m ilitary is th e on ly h ig h ly p ro fessio nal an d au to n o m o u s b u reau c ra tic organization left in the state. It has insulated itself to a remarkable degree from the breakdown now plaguing the civilian sectors. To a Pakistani four-star or three-star general, the need to replicate the m ilitary’s ethos and autonom y on the civilian side o f the state apparatus ought to be self-evident, for the military cannot sustain prolonged interventions in the day-to-day running o f the country. The four quotes provided below help explore the evolving attitude o f military regimes towards the civilian bureaucracy.

The first quote is from 1961 (the Ayub Khan regime):Parleys and discussion, which are the methods to be adopted by a civil officer in dealing with the mass of the people, are not expected of a member of the Armed Forces, who has to deal only with those who have, by a course of discipline, become really subordinate to him. A . . . Commissioner, on the other hand, cannot regard the people of his district in the same manner. He has to deal with them with great tact. . . . From this point of view, his work is far more difficult than that of an officer in the Armed Forces of a corresponding rank. The very fact that an average military officer, when confronted with a question of complexity involving discussion of respective rights, would normally exclaim that he is a soldier and has no time or inclination for a debate, indicates the difference in the points of view of the services. (CC 1961: 107)T he second quote is from 1982 (the Zia regime):In fact many of the past controversies like ‘generalist versus specialist’ have been overtaken by events. They are in any case peripheral to the stark reality: the continual erosion in real pay and pension may soon divide the civil services between the corrupt and the destitute. The latter may even now be no exaggeration for many of our pensioners. In the circumstances, attainment of professional excellence remains a goal only for a small and shrinking circle. This is reflected even in our intake: government service as a career hold litde attraction for bright persons and the new amongst them who join, do so for the wrong reasons (Zaidi 1982a: 33).

The third quote is also Zaidi’s, trying to explain to Zia the ‘graver dangers o f mediocrity succum bing to greed’:The results are all too visible today as a consequence of (i) entrusting authority to ill-paid and indifferent functionaries and (ii) attending the neglect of proper supervision. It can never be to the country’s interest to put up with the indifferent and the mediocre for this will ensure neither economy nor efficiency. O n the other hand, professional and dedicated persons cannot be attracted to government service unless they are given incentives commensurate with their ability. Pay is an important consideration but prestige and challenging work could make the difference. The solution may well be to encourage elitism, not in one or two cadres alone but in many fields— engineering, agriculture, administration, education and others. Elites in a bureaucracy are dedicated, have the courage to act and can make the system work. This has been the experience in many countries— Britain, France, Germany and Japan. There is nothing ‘colonial’ about it. It is in fact the need of the hour. (Zaidi 1982b: 14)And the last quote is from 2000 (the M usharraf regime):The civil service is effectively controlled by the DM G. The group has close relations with international donors. . . . Other groups in the public administration chafe under the control of one group and would welcome a democratization of civil service structure. The end of the domination o f the bureaucracy by one group is a necessary pre-condition for the attainment o f administrative power by the Army and the creation of conditions for national reconstruction. (National Reconstruction Bureau, cited in ICG 2004: 7)W hat the quotations reveal is that other than the Ayub Khan regime, military governments were either indifferent to the need for reform (Zia) or positively hostile to the civilian bureaucracy (Musharraf) and sought direct administrative power for the military. The professionalism o f their own institution, rather than motivating them to strive to inculcate the same virtues on the civilian side, seemed to reinforce the idea of military superiority while the political interests of the military regimes took priority over the reform o f the state apparatus. Thus, under Zia, the opportunity presented by generous financial assistance, courtesy the Afghan jihad, failed to convince him o f the need to prioritize civil service reform and only m inor tinkering was allowed. The M usharraf regime actively sought to render the field adm inistration subservient to indirectly elected


mayors and district chiefs who were, in turn, dependent on military patronage for securing their positions. Sound advice from different quarters— be it proposals to establish a Council o f State or CoS (1961) or to professionalize the civilian bureaucracy (1962, 1982- 5) or to establish neutral bodies to oversee prom otions, transfers, and discipline o f the criminal justice system though readily extendable to the civil service officer corps as a whole (2000; Rathore 2000)— or the remonstrations o f Nadeem-ul Haque, Deputy Chairman o f the Planning Commission from 2010 to 2013, all ended in frustration and failure (FEG 2 0 1 1).3 For this, the rulers o f the day— military as well as civilian— were responsible and it cannot be said that wise advice that stood the test o f time was not proffered. And yet, here the nature and com position o f Pakistan’s bureaucratic leadership and the vested interests o f the generalist Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS, formerly known as District M anagem ent G roup or D M G till 2012 and, before 1973, Civil Service o f Pakistan or CSP) have also played an im portant role in sabotaging m uch-needed reforms.

N O T E S

1. Syed Kaleem Imam’s ‘Problems of Governance in Pakistan: A Case Study of Police Administration (2001-08)’ is an eye-opening dissertation (Islamabad: Islamic International University, 2011) on the state of order in Pakistan. It is based on extensive field research, surveys, a creditable reading o f secondary sources, and the author’s own experiences as a PSP officer. The study is thorough in that it goes beyond recent developments and probes deep into south Asian history to explain the nature of the state and the behaviour of policing agencies in the pre-modern period. The author notes that in the pre-British Indian states the police was a paramilitary or military force designed to suppress rebellion against the ruler though, under some states, such as the Mauryas, a degree o f functional specializations may have been achieved. The British Raj modernized aspects o f policing in south Asia with the aim of maintaining order within a legal framework inspired in part by Enlightenment ideals and in part by the requirements of maintaining order in a society as diverse as India. While hardly enamoured of British rule, the author rightly points out that, since independence, Pakistan’s rulers reversed

Military Regimes and the Exacerbation 37

much of the modernization o f the police turning it into an instrument of regime perpetuation and personal security. The study provides a lot of disturbing detail about police organization as it stands. O ne is amazed to learn, for example, that hardly any police stations of those surveyed have photocopiers, and close to one-sixth o f police stations don’t have a fixed telephone line. The proportion o f police deployment for the personal protection o f the rulers is also staggering. In 2008, in the Punjab, for instance, out o f a total police force o f 180,000, some 6,000 were deployed on the chief minister’s (then Shahbaz Sharif) four personal and official residences, with a sizeable percentage of the rest deployed on protocol duties. The study also sheds light on the educational standards o f the police and reveals that about 1 per cent o f the force are highly educated officers, while nearly nine- tenths o f the forces are nominally literate constables and head constables. The study recommends better training, facilities, finances, organization, and less politicization, as the key requirements for police reform. It also observes that the legal framework o f the 2002 Police Order has effectively lapsed, the government having failed to enact legislation. This is surely a reflection o f the government’s misplaced priorities. Even under Musharraf, however, important parts of the 2002 Police Order were not or could not be implemented

2. Banik (2001: 110) reveals that the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is subjected to levels o f arbitrariness comparable to those prevalent in Pakistan. Between 1976 and 1986, for instance, only 11 per cent o f IAS officers survived more than two years in any given post, 28 per cent survived for twelve to twenty-three months, and 54 per cent stood transferred within a year.

3. For m ore o f N adeem -ul H aq u e ’s analysis, see his b log h t tp : / / development20.blogspot.com/. A recent post about Pakistan’s ailing power sector reveals: ‘Power sector inefficiencies have cost us well over 7 per cent of GDP in direct budget costs in the last 5 years. In addition, growth has been slowed down by at least 2 per cent per annum, i.e. over 10 per cent foregone output in the last 5 years. Yet the problem is far from behind us.’

3 8 Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect

C H A P T E R 5

The Bureaucratic Leadership and the Civil-M ilitary Imbalance

U nder dem ocratic dispensations, the civilian bureaucracy is seen primarily as an instrum ent o f patronage and civil servants are treated as personal servants. Under military regimes, the rhetoric is more sophisticated and the appearance o f interest in reforms is maintained but, in substantive terms, the civilian bureaucracy continues to be treated arbitrarily and is used to m eet political and legitim acy requirem ents. Retired civil servants w ho lam ent the decline o f professionalism and probity often lay the blame for failing to salvage the state apparatus at the door o f the political leadership. There is tru th in this bu t a m ore detached assessment reveals that senior civil servants actively prevented reforms that might have hurt their short-term or sectional interests. Advice, when given, was set aside in favour o f m aintaining status quo that had long become dysfunctional. Pakistan’s bureaucracy is, for instance, characterized as being over-centralized, seriously deficient in professionalism, and practically unaccountable to the citizens. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Ayub Khan regime constituted numerous commissions and sought advice on such issues. Pro-reform elements that appreciated the phenom enon o f change responded with alacrity to the ruler’s solicitous attitude towards advice and presented their views.

W ith reference to centralization, A .G .N . Kazi, a m em ber o f the 1962 Finance Commission, made the case that the provincial powers o f taxation centralized in 1948 needed to be returned to their rightful tier o f government (FC 1962). T he centralization o f revenue sources, such as the general sales tax and taxes on energy, occurred in 1948 due to the emergency situation in the country. W hile the emergency had ended many years before 1962, provincial powers

o f taxation had n o t been restored. Kazi argued th a t it was essential so tha t the provinces, especially East Pakistan, cou ld generate and spend revenues as they w ished. Kazi observed th a t adm in istra tive cen tra liza tio n aside, the annual s trugg le betw een p rov inces over th e ir share o f th e divisible pool o f financia l resources genera ted h a tred betw een the tw o w ings an d was en tire ly avoidable. K azi’s p o sitio n was n o t in keep ing w ith A yub K han ’s th in k in g . O th e r civil servants o n the Finance C om m ission d id no t w ish to incorpora te K azi’s views in th e ir m a in repo rt. T h is fo rced Kazi to su b m it a n o te o f d issen t, w h ich was in c o rp o ra ted in to the F inance C o m m ission’s report. C iven the cen trality o f econom ic grievances roo ted in fiscal cen tra liza tion to the East Pakistani sense o f dep riva tion , the central governm en t w ou ld have d o n e well to heed this advice. In the longer ru n , resto ring taxa tion pow ers to the p rov inces in 1962 could have helped Pakistan create a m ore flexible and effective tax adm in istra tion an d hab ituated the federating units to genera ting m ore o f the ir ow n finances.

W ith reference to professionalism , in 1962, the Pay an d Services C om m ission chaired by Justice A. R. C ornelius, delivered its findings an d recom m endations. C ornelius was an In d ian Civil Service (ICS) officer w ho had o p ted for the judicial stream and thus un dersto o d the needs o f the executive bette r than judges draw n from the legal profession. C o rn e liu s’s association w ith the IC S n o tw ith s tan d in g , h is rep o rt m ade the case th a t P ak istan ’s ad m in istra tiv e s tru c tu re needed to be professionalized (P S C 1962). T h is was d u e to the grow ing technical com plexity o f areas such as health, in frastructu re , an d education , and necessitated by the governm en t’s em phasis on econom ic developm ent. In the 1800s o r early 1900s, a generalist IC S officer cou ld do a decen t job o f coo rd in a tin g the activities o f the education , hea lth , an d public w orks d ep artm en ts at the local level an d also, in sen io r policy-level posts at the cen tre , p rov ide so un d advice, given the lim ited expecta tions an d technical c o m plexity o f these fields a t the tim e. H ow ever, after W orld W ar II, w ith developm ent the top p riority an d given the rapid advances in m edicine, engineering, education, and com m unications, it no longer m ade sense to ap p o in t adm inistrative heads w ho lacked specialized know ledge. C o rn e liu s also w arned th a t th e g ro w in g pressure o f


The Bureaucratic Leadership 41developm ent w ork made the CSP cadres neglect their duties of district magistracy, police supervision, and land revenue collection. This was unfortunate because the CSP, like the ICS, was specifically designed to fulfil these roles. In practical term s, the proposed professionalization would have eventually m eant direct competitive recru itm ent by m inistries, tigh ten ing o f eligibility criteria, and creation o f new CSS for finance, health, education, infrastructure, industry, commerce, communications, etc., from which the bureaucratic leadership o f the future would be drawn.

W ith reference to accountability, Ambassador S.K. Dehlavi was tasked by the C onstitu tion C om m ission to prepare a report on adm inistrative law in Europe. Subm itted in February 1961, his report explained the origins o f adm inistrative law in Europe and provided a comparative treatm ent o f the subject (Dehlavi 1961). T he basic rationale for adm inistrative law in France and other continental European countries was to enforce certain parameters o f accountability on the executive in its daily exercise o f power through the bureaucracy. Dehlavi observed that even in the UK, the rapid expansion o f state functions before and after World War II had led to the executive taking over legislative functions, especially with regard to procedure. O f all the European states, France had the oldest and most effective tradition o f adm inistrative law operated by the prestigious CoS. In Pakistan, the state had taken on ambitious developm ent and regulatory goals and thus needed to expand the executive function far beyond what it had inherited from the British Raj. In order to keep the bureaucracy accountable, it was necessary to create a body akin to the French CoS, a body that could check maladministration and redress complaints much swifter than the regular judicial system.

T he proposals received from Kazi, C ornelius, and D ehlavi addressed problem s arising from excessive centralization, insufficient professionalization, and the overwhelming o f accountability m echanisms by the growth o f governm ent expenditure and the expansion o f state functions. W hat these proposals had in com m on was that they ran counter to the interests o f the generalist CSP, which dom inated the federal ministries, the provincial secretariats, and the divisional and district adm inistrations. Returning to the

provinces the power to raise their own revenues could allow them to create well-funded provincial services to meet the needs o f their people— a development that in tim e would leave the CSP and the federal ministries out in the cold. Allowing for professionalization w ould m ean an end to the C SP’s ability to colonize specialized departm ents like health , education , industries, com m erce, and public sector corporations, and lord it over the specialists. And accountability o f the day-to-day w orking o f the bureaucracy in which many o f the decisions were made by the CSP was deemed too dangerous to be allowed. All these recom m endations were shelved while Ayub Khan continued to rely on the CSP to deliver on his development goals while managing local politics to ensure a pliant class o f ‘Basic Democrats’.

T he CSP’s success in husbanding its clout at the expense o f the state’s broader interests had disastrous consequences for the entire civilian bureaucracy. First, a critical opportunity for reform in the early-1960s— when funds and expertise were available— was lost, never to be regained, for the march o f history often does no t perm it a second chance. Second, professional groups and specialists in the state service became resentful o f the CSP for having abdicated its leadership role and having assum ed a predatory stance towards other services. T hird , the CSP’s close association w ith the Ayub Khan regime destroyed its image as an impartial arbiter, while its role as the instrum ent through which patronage was funnelled to localities and as the political enforcer, m eant th a t it could no t escape popular hostility. This set the stage for the popular purges instituted by Yahya Khan and Bhutto between 1969 and 1977.

T he purges, com bined w ith the B hutto-era reform s, further underm ined the professionalism and in tegrity o f the services. Academic m erit was replaced by political loyalty as the basis o f recruitment. Prom otions and transfers came to depend on perceived personal allegiance rather than merit. T he introduction o f National Pay Scales that divided the bureaucracy into 22 grades (1 being the lowest and 22 the highest) left six grades (17-22) for officers regardless o f the actual hierarchies (Kennedy 1987: 88—108). It also led to the establishm ent o f grade equivalence— it was now possible to rise in grade w ithout actually being selected against a


The Bureaucratic Leadership 43superior post. Alternatively, the same posts were allotted m ultiple grades. Thus, for instance, in the Pakistan Foreign Service (PFS), the ranks are T h ird Secretary, Second Secretary, First Secretary, Counsellor, Minister, and Ambassador. Ambassador rank began at Grade 20 (though a M inister could also be appointed in Grade 20) but also included grades 21 and 22; that left only grades 17, 18, and 19 to accommodate the five remaining ranks. T he politically connected could always get themselves posted as M inister in Grade21 or 22 or w hatever the ruler fancied. Police constables were initially placed in Grade 1, alongside sweepers, but later upgraded to Grade 5. Posts w ithin ministries were subjected to grade inflation, thus one m inistry could end up w ith more than one grade22 officer working in it, effectively delinking the rank o f a federal secretary from an actual posting as a federal secretary. O n the other hand, to appease certain constituencies, the governm ent could announce post upgrades. T hus, the M usharraf regime upgraded public sector university teaching and research posts by one grade m eaning that while a civil service officer starts his or her career in Grade 17, a university lecturer joins in at Grade 18.'

Grades aside, real pay in the public sector for the officer grades dim inished rapidly after 1972 and, by the late-1980s, was perhaps 10-20 per cent o f its value in 1956. The state took increasingly to rem u nera tin g officers in k ind th an in cash, p rov id ing special facilities, allowances, and below -m arket real estate purchases, to compensate them . The trouble with this approach was that it was end-loaded— officers found themselves having to choose between impoverishment and corruption very early in their careers. W hen they rose to senior levels, they received greater facilities bu t their salaries were perhaps one-tenth o f what they received in kind. The m aintenance cost o f these facilities was also significant, in terms o f additional staff and loss o f services to the public and revenue. Thus, the state ended up paying more to m aintain a corrupt bureaucratic officer class that felt entitled to bo th plunder and perks. O nce the officer grades tasted the fruits o f plunder, increasing their salaries became alm ost meaningless; the am ou n t to be gained th rough abuse o f power in the district adm inistration, police, courts, and developm ent and service arms far exceeds even a generous salary.

By tying privileges and allowances to posts, the rulers also sought to ensure compliance for transfer or suspension would mean loss o f facilities. It is a m easure o f the bureaucratic leadership’s n o n seriousness that the PFS, whose existence is basically irrelevant to Pakistan’s population, is arguably the only quasi-professional civilian bureaucracy left and suffers relatively less from the arbitrary transfers that have left other departm ents and ministries in shambles.

N O T E

1. The preceding paragraph draws upon the firsthand knowledge and experience of the author about the public sector in Pakistan.


Reforming the Apparatus: W hat Could Work in Theory

Pakistan’s mainstream reformers, ranging from Ayub Khan’s developm ent moguls to M usharraf’s devolution experts, exhibited delusional optim ism and paralysing cynicism, at times simultaneously. Fashionable prescriptions that involved employing the latest jargon o f democracy, developm ent, and society, were tossed about with apparent conviction by an otherwise complacent bureaucratic leadership, as shown in the Report o f the Committee fo r the Study o f Corruption b rough t ou t in 1986. At times, m ilitary rulers and even politicians took to this practice. Internal efforts at reform and advice were dismissed or ignored. T he basic lack o f m utual empathy and trust th a t pervades the political, military, and bureaucratic elites ensured that the reform efforts actually attem pted, such as Bhutto’s or M usharraf’s, were ill-conceived and cynical vendettas. Otherwise, the reforming impulse proved abortive on account of the inertial m om entum o f vested interests (Ayub Khan) or the banality o f the rulers o f the day (Zia). The declassified record of the Pakistani state is a graveyard o f ideas that should and could have been im plem ented but were not. T he single most im portant opinion that emerges is that rather than adhering to donor-sponsored prescriptions or pursuing m isguided vengeance against a section o f the civilian bureaucracy, Pakistan’s would-be reformers ought to have become acquainted with the prescriptions that were ignored. W hat follows, therefore, makes no claim to originality though it does seek to amalgamate the views that the Pakistani state was able to generate on a wide range o f issues at different points in its history. This strain o f indigenous wisdom saw Pakistan as a bureaucratic state in which the quality o f governance depended

substantially on the professionalism and m otivation o f its servants. It accepted th a t the officers in the civilian bureaucracy had a leadership role to play, both in terms o f running their organizations and advising the political leadership o f the day w ithout fear or favour. It also recognized the central im portance o f South Asia’s historical experience o f the state and drew parallels w ith o ther Eurasian polities rather than with the US. Finally, this approach did no t imagine that Pakistan’s problems could be magically resolved by a formula developed in W ashington, D .C . Instead, it sought to make Pakistan a better version o f itself.

T he basic reform needed, from this perspective, is to curtail the arbitrariness w ith which personnel m anagement functions (postings, transfers, discipline) are carried out. Imagine what would happen to Pakistan’s m ilitary if the average tenure o f an officer was six m onths in any one post and a politically connected junior officer or enlisted m an could get his com m anding officer transferred or suspended? T he discipline o f the m ilitary would collapse, deflected from its professional functions o f preparing for war and adm inistering itself. A nd yet, such suicidal whimsicality is practised w ithout restraint on the civilian side o f the state apparatus. The transfer o f 240 taxation service officers in 2012—13, or the fact th a t the Intelligence Bureau has had six different heads since 2008 while the Federal Investigation Agency has had eight and the FBR seven, form the tip o f a very large iceberg.1 Pakistani newspapers are littered w ith such stories. In such conditions, the fact that Pakistan still has the semblance o f state m achinery is creditable. The power o f transfer can be reformed if it is entrusted to neutral bodies m odelled on the public service commissions that undertake recruitment. M embers o f the proposed neutral bodies w ould serve one, fixed, non-renew able, non-extendable tenure o f five years. T he com position o f these bodies could include one retired judge o f the H igh C ourt or Supreme Court, one retired Grade 22 federal officer, one nominee o f the PM , one nominee o f the leader o f the opposition, one representative o f the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC), w ith the Secretary Establishment serving as ex-officio chairperson. This board would be tasked with vetting transfer orders for officers o f the CSS in grades 17 through 22 and have the power to halt


Reforming the Apparatus 47punitive, arbitrary, or otherwise unm erited transfers. Since the workload m ight be too great for a single board, it may be better to constitute separate boards for each m inistry with smaller ministries sharing a board. This experiment will require to be left in place for at least five years, there will be m any teething troubles but, if as a consequence, the level o f arbitrariness decreases even by one-third it will allow a substantial portion o f officers to complete regular tenures and furnish solid grounds for their assessment. The board(s) will adm ittedly no t be able to achieve very m uch beyond a slightly greater measure o f predictability in bureaucratic personnel managem ent. This, while essential, leaves the m atter o f im proving the intellectual and m oral quality o f the civil servants unaddressed. Given the cynicism, demoralization, and corruption that pervade the state machinery, one can foresee a situation wherein civil servants will find ways to subvert the neutral bodies th rough delay and misrepresentation. There is no quick way to effect the im provement needed in the quality o f Pakistan’s civil servants and simply throwing money is not going to help. The process by which civil servants are recruited, trained, and rem unerated will have to be reconsidered.

Currently, civil service officers are recruited through an annual CSS examination conducted by the FPSC. This examination has a w ritten stage and an interview stage followed by allocation to a service. In the first stage, aspirants attem pt papers in compulsory and elective subjects. I f they pass, they are called for interviews. T hen their marks are tallied and candidates with the highest marks within each province are adjusted against the share o f that province in the total num ber o f seats. It is thus entirely possible to pass all the tests and yet no t get allocated to a service. If allocated, two years o f train ing follow. The first year is the C om m on Training Programme (CTP) in which all new recruits, regardless o f service, are instructed together. The second year is the Specialized Training Program m e (STP), for which the new recruits are divided in to their respective services and sent to separate training institutions. Now, this system presumes that the best m inds in the country will, between the ages of 22 and 24 years, drop everything and study at least one year for the CSS exam ination.2 Once the examination is held, the subsequent processes take another year, sometimes m ore,

to complete. Eventually, the successful candidates will probably end up in a service for which they are academically and temperam entally unqualified. W ith the exception o f the PAS and Police Service o f Pakistan (PSP), the officers that end up in the other services do so by default rather than design. Thus, if you want to join the taxation service, or the police, or the foreign service, you have to apply for all o f them and then go wherever the arcane clericalism o f quotas and m erit calculations lands you. To top it off, the starting salary is low— around Rs. 30,000 a m onth— and unless you end up in the police or adm inistrative service, which have large establishm ents or are privately wealthy, you can look forward to a life o f institutionalized poverty filled with petty strife over allotment o f a room to live in at a government hostel, availing o f allowances, and writing applications for every little th ing.3

Here the m otivation for joining the service comes into play. The desire is for coercive power that can be used to extract benefits for one’s family or kinship group, hence the strong inclination to join the police or the administrative service. The decline in the quality o f Pakistan’s public sector education system, includ ing at the un iversity level, m eans th a t the m ed ian quality o f graduates attem pting the examination is falling. If Pakistan’s education system were more rigorous, especially at the college and university levels, this dissipation could be compensated to some extent but it is very far from being the case. Due to this nexus, a vicious cycle is created— service conditions are poor, the best m inds prefer to go elsewhere, education standards are falling, so those that do get in are poorly educated. At the training institutions, the C T P is often a misuse o f tim e and resources while specialized train ing is too short to rem edy the basic deficiencies in education and groom ing. T he faculty members at these training institutions are, at times, posted there as punishm ent and thus fail to inspire the recruits or teach them very m uch. Two approaches can be adopted to address problems o f recruitm ent and training as well as rem uneration. The first would entail a radical reworking o f the system, while the second would in troduce reform s aim ed to im prove the curren t set-up through relatively small steps.

A radical redesign can be inspired by the example o f the O ttom an


Reforming the Apparatus 49Sultanate though, of course, the details will be very different if a Pakistani ruler were to accept the principle behind it. Faced with the problem o f ensuring a steady supply of highly able and loyal m ilitary officers and palace officials, O tto m an sultans took to enslaving non-M uslim boys in Anatolia and the Balkans via the child tax. These children were taken from their homes at the ages o f 10 to 12 years and sent to live for a year with a Turkish family to learn the language and culture o f the imperial elite. T he brawny ones would be trained for a military career, the brainier ones would become elite technocrats, and the best overall would become palace officials. The recruits received a thorough education in law, religion, history, literature, mathematics, warfare, medicine, arts, sciences, and administration. Typically, the first posting o f these slave-soldiers and slave-administrators came at age 24 or 25, which m eant twelve to fourteen years o f training, grooming, and education under the sultan’s eye. It was expected that the officer class w ould possess leadership qualities, encyclopaedic knowledge, and loyalty to the sultanate (not necessarily individual sultans). O f course, Pakistan can’t start enslaving children to provide recruits for the civil service. W hat Pakistan can do is to establish a National School o f Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, and a National School ofTheoretical and Applied Sciences. Every year, induction to these schools can take place based on the results of the m atriculation examination. The top three ranking students in social sciences, arts and hum anities, and the top three in the sciences, in each district, could receive full scholarships to attend one o f the two national schools. There, they would receive a rigorous higher secondary education, followed by a four-year undergraduate programme. In addition to academic subjects, physical education, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, leadership skills building exercises, intensive counselling designed to gradually alienate the recipients from primordial loyalties, and practical exposure to real-world administrative problems can be integrated into the curricula. T he culm ination o f this process would be a specialized one-year MS degree (so, a future medical adm inistra to r w ould op t for an MS in public health , a future diplom at for an MS in diplomacy, a future police officer for an MS in criminology, and so on). Upon com pletion o f this specialized

degree, a final examination can be held for allocation to the services, in line w ith th a t for w hich the cand idate is academ ically and tem peram entally qualified. Indeed, the length o f the education programme would be designed to determ ine which candidate is in fact best suited for which service. T he PAS, would, however, be open to all graduates. If a graduate fails the final service entrance examination, he or she will still have a world-class education that will enable them to have a successful career in the private or social sectors. For the successful, one year o f specialized training would follow. T he end result would be that a 15 or 16-year-old matriculate would receive education, training, and groom ing for leadership, for nine or ten years and thus receive his or her first posting at the age o f 25 or 26 years.

A solution such as the one outlined above m ight be what Pakistan needs in the long term but not one likely to find m uch support within the bureaucracy or polity. Even w ithin the existing framework, there is m uch that can be done to improve the recruitm ent process. T he CSS is a passive recruitm ent process that also takes a long tim e to reach any conclusion, favourable or unfavourable.4 The introduction o f a descriptive qualifying examination (as opposed to the one based on multiple choice questions being contemplated) would be a positive step.5 It would reduce the num ber o f candidates in the subject papers and decrease the pressure on examiners. Paying the examiners better would also help in this respect as would making sixteen years o f education (four-year BA/B.Sc. or two-year BA/ B.Sc. plus two-year MA/M.Sc.) part o f the eligibility criteria. Adjusting service allocation in light o f academic qualifications is another possibility as is allowing ministries to conduct their own examinations under the FPSC’s auspices. Thus, candidates opting for the PFS, or PSP w ould have separate exam inations w ith different subjects. T he exam inations would be held at different points in the year so that candidates could apply for more than one service. E lim inating or reducing the quota system, whereby candidates are selected against seats reserved against domicile, can also be considered.6 At the same time, it would be necessary to create new services for finance, health , education, public w orks/engineering, state corporations m anagement, in ternet and telecom m unications, en


Reforming the Apparatus 51vironm ent protection, wom en’s development, population welfare, economic development, and civilian intelligence and investigation agencies.

Im p ro v in g th e pay package and sim plify ing rem u n era tio n practices is essential if Pakistan’s civilian bureaucracy is to be reformed in the long term. In 2011—12, when stripped o f allowances and priv ileges, th e low est p a id em ployee (G rade 1) drew a maximum salary o f about Rs. 10,000 per m onth (starting salary of Rs. 4,800 per m onth), while the highest paid (Grade 22) drew a m axim um m o n th ly salary o f Rs. 85 ,70 0 (sta rting salary o f Rs. 43,000). T he officer ranks start at Grade 17, at which a new recruit could expect a starting salary o f Rs. 16,000 per m onth (maximum, about Rs. 40,000 per m onth). The previous PPP-led governm ent (2008-13) added ad hoc relief allowances, including a further increase o f 20 per cent in M arch 2013, during the final days o f Raja Pervez Ashraf’s premiership. W ith inflation running in double digits and citizens diverting personal incom e to cope with the power and water crises, such increases barely beat inflation. N om inal values can also be misleading and so it helps if we use real commodities as an index o f value to understand the collapse of public sector pay in Pakistan.

In 1956, a Secretary to the Governm ent o f Pakistan (Grade 22) drew a m onthly take home salary o f about Rs. 4,000 while a new recruit drew about Rs. 350-400 per m onth. At the time, the cost o f one tola (about 11 grams) o f pure gold was about Rs. 90. This m eant that a federal secretary could convert his salary into 44 tolas o f gold and a freshly inducted officer could convert his salary into about 4 tolas o f gold. In 2013, one tola o f pure gold cost about Rs. 50,000 or more than three times the starting basic pay o f an officer in Grade 17. A Grade 22 officer w ith the rank o f federal secretary could covert the m axim um m onth ly basic salary into 1.7 tolas o f pu re gold. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, an im ported 1500 cc sedan cost between Rs. 11,000 and 12,000, or three m onths incom e for a federal secretary and 2 7 -3 3 m onths income for an officer who had just joined service. In the latter’s case, an advance for a car from the governm ent could easily be availed and paid back over the next few years. Today, in Pakistan,

a com parable locally assembled car costs about Rs. 2 m illion or about 23 m onths’ pay for a federal secretary and 125 m onths’ pay for a new recruit. The collapse o f standards in the public sector education system, com bined with the escalation in the cost o f a private education, have left civil servants with families in a predicament. In the early 1960s, the tu ition fee in a top private school was betw een Rs. 30 and 50 per m o n th , abou t o n e -ten th the m onthly salary o f a new officer and one-hundredth that o f a federal secretary’s. As public sector schooling was still competitive, many civil servants voluntarily sent their children to state schools where fees were nominal. Even at the college level then, fees ranged between Rs. 15 to 30 per m onth for higher secondary and graduate-level studies at institutions such as the prestigious Governm ent College, Lahore. Today, the tu ition fee for one child at a ‘good’ private school, such as Beacon House, stands between Rs. 6,000 and 8,000 per m onth, or between one-third and one-tenth of a government officer’s salary. College education escalates considerably, especially since the upwardly mobile aspire to send their children to private colleges or to colleges abroad. The Lahore University o f M anagement Sciences (LUMS), a private university known for its high teaching standards, charges undergraduates a basic semester fee of Rs. 219,000 which works adds up to Rs. 438,000 per year.7 Add to this charges such as admission fees, registration, hostel accom m odation, and living expenses, and the cost of sending one child to LUMS for one year is about Rs. 600,000— equal to seven m onths’ basic maximum salary for a Grade 22 officer. Assuming that the officer is honest and has no alternative source o f incom e, sacrificing such a high percentage o f his or her income would require a shift to a diet of rice and lentils and drastic curtailm ent o f consum ption, as well as taking the harsh and socially unacceptable decision of sending any remaining children to a local government degree college or public sector university.

Here is the ironic summation: regardless o f the commodities or services one uses to frame a comparison, public sector salaries at the officer level have diminished to a fraction o f what they were in the 1950s and 1960s, before Bhutto’s onslaught. T hat onslaught was m eant as a revenge on civil servants but, in the long run, it is


Reforming the Apparatus 53the civil servants who have taken revenge on the state and society through corruption and incompetence.

The social status o f civil service officers is that o f gentlem en while the pay package is designed to ensure pauperization. Pulled in opposite directions by their social status and actual pay, it is no surprise that all civil service officers engage in legalized corruption via privileges, exem ptions, subsidies, sub-m arket-price purchases o f land, etc., while many also exploit the inherent weak accountability and strong pressure to extract commissions and bribes, and perpetrate fraud and m isrepresentation. It is necessary, however, to draw a d istinction between those w ho are com pelled by the system to extract legalized benefits and those who are criminally and habitually corrupt. Though this line has become blurred on account o f the pervasive abuse o f perks and privileges even by conventionally honest civil servants, the former are capable o f redem ption while the latter can only be disciplined through accountability under the law.

Redemption can only begin if the political leadership internalizes three facts: (1) Civil service officers m ust be paid enough so as to attract the best minds in the country to the state services; (2) The British Indian Class I, II, III, IV system will need to be restored at the functional level and the pay scales o f the officer grades (1 7 - 22) delinked from the rest; (3) All rem uneration, in kind during or after service, m ust cease for the officer class once revised pay scales are in effect.

The starting salary (Grade 17) for a civil service officer should be on par with its gold value in 1956 (4 tolas) and set at Rs. 200,000 per m on th . T h e next h igher rank (G rade 18) should receive Rs. 300,000 per m onth while a deputy secretary (Grade 19) should draw at least Rs. 400,000 per m onth. A joint secretary rank officer (Grade 20), which is a senior policy-level post that requires decades o f experience to reach, should get about Rs. 500,000 per m onth. An add ition a l secretary rank officer (G rade 21) should draw Rs. 800,000 per m onth while a federal secretary (Grade 22) should be paid Rs. 1.5 m illion per m onth. A t these rates, there will be little com petition in terms o f a ttracting the best talent to state service even if one accounts for the two years invested in examination

and recruitm ent. These increases can only be im plem ented if the pay scales o f grades 17-22 are delinked from the basic pay scale and functional hierarchies are restored to each service so that in terservice grade equivalence is abolished and gradations o f pay reflect the actual service structures. This will also arrest prom otions in grade and facilitate only prom otions against actual posts. Given the hierarchical structure and discipline o f Pakistan’s bureaucracy, ensuring the officer class’ aloofness from the rest and from society at large is critical to m aintaining the integrity o f the state itself. T he support staff will continue to engage in petty harassment and corruption though an honest and im partial officer corps— that is superbly rem unerated— will be in a strong position to discipline their subordinates. A logical extension o f paym ent o f generous salaries is that all privileges, perks, subsidies, exemptions, and so on will be withdrawn and the assets, that were once thus tied up by the state in rem uneration in kind, will be constructively deployed elsewhere. If a deputy secretary draws a m onthly salary of Rs. 400,000, he or she does no t need the state to provide transport, accom m odation, servants, medical care, land, or even a pension. Assuming that such an officer saves one-fifth o f his or her m onthly income, it should be feasible for him or her to invest their savings in government securities and m utual funds and buy the best medical insurance straight off the market.

Alongside a dram atic revamp o f the pay structure, reforms in recruitment, and improvements in training, there must be accountability. H ere, Pakistan can learn from France and Turkey8 and establish a full-fledged CoS with a constitutional status and m andate to check the arbitrary exercise o f power by the bureaucracy. Regular courts ought to, in the event o f a CoS being constituted, refer disputes arising from the exercise o f administrative power by the state to the CoS. Given the large num ber o f cases that are likely to come its way, the CoS will have to be a fairly large organization, with at least 100 judges drawn from the bar, the civil service, the private sector, and civil society (25 from each). Pakistan’s desultory experience with adm inistrative tribunals can be brought to bear in helping make the CoS more effective.

Finally, there is the m atter o f the size o f the civilian bureaucracy.


Reforming the Apparatus 55Organizations like the Pakistan Steel Mills, the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, state guest houses, the Pakistan Stone Development Company, and others need to go under the hammer; their liquidated assets can be used to improve the fiscal situation o f the government. T hen federal ministries, such as those that exist for sports, youth, culture, religion, privatization, local government, and inter-provincial coordination, can be phased out by being transferred into the control o f the Interior, Finance, Economic Affairs Division or Inform ation , and w ith no further recru itm ent they will die out in twenty to thirty years. Nadeem -ul Haque, former deputy chairm an o f the Planning Com m ission, reflecting on the situation at the end o f his tenure, even advised that the commission ought to be abolished since it had long stopped doing anything useful.9

N O T E S

1. ‘A vignette or two will give the unfamiliar reader a sad and painful insight into the inner workings and state of FBR—an entity that still has a large corps of professionally competent people. In the past five years, FBR has witnessed seven chairmen. In the last nine months alone, there have been an unprecedented 240 transfers and postings—a record of sorts. The FBR’s state of flux has worsened since 2008 by frequent transfers, postings and interference by the political system. In addition, its internal restructuring along functional lines (Internal Revenue and Customs) has not been well thought out nor effectively implemented, and has for all practical purposes broken the organisation into two parts that are divorced from each other. The effect on morale has compounded the FBR’s already weak enforcement performance’ (Sherani 2013).

2. This was a plausible position in the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps even in the 1980s and 1990s, but the rise of the social sector, opportunities in the media and in the private sector, mean that public service is not the favoured career for Pakistan’s enterprising youth.

3. In the PFS, officers on home rotation who do not have their homes in Islamabad, are typically reduced to living in one or two rooms in a government hostel, pending a vacancy in the Foreign Office’s residential apartments. The alternative is to sacrifice precious savings from the foreign allowance paid while abroad to rent decent accommodation in the city.

56 Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect4. For more on the CSS examination, see the Federal Public Service Commission

website at www.fpsc.gov.pk, last accessed on 5 June 2014.5. In the 2013 examination, controversy arose when the pass rate in the written

examination was only 2.09 per cent (238/11,406). The problem apparently arose because some of the more conventional topics that students can memorize for deployment on the English essay were not on the paper. Pushed out of their comfort zone, candidates sank. The FPSC did its job, and tried to improve standards with the result that hardly anyone passed. On the other hand, many qualified candidates capable of original thinking would not have attempted the paper in 2013 due to it having become more oriented towards rote learning and employing tricks to beat the test. The low passing rate also says much about the over all quality of higher education and secondary education in Pakistan and indicates that if Pakistan is to improve the quality of its civil servants it will have to circumvent the constraints of the mainstream education system. For a good analysis of the recent examination, see Rashid (2014).

6. Candidates from genuinely needy and deserving backgrounds do not benefit from the quota system as much as candidates who can afford to go to the more advanced parts of the country to acquire an education or have access to private sector education. Making the quota system 80 per cent merit, with 20 per cent reservation for women, minorities, rural Sindh and rural Balochistan, is feasible and would help improve the quality of candidates recruited through the competitive examination.

7. More at http://lums.edu.pk/content/fee-structure-875, last accessed on 27 June 2013.

8. For a fascinating and deeply informative account of the Turkish Council of State (CoS), see Orucu (2000: 688). The Turkish CoS is called the Danistay and presides over a hierarchy of regional administrative courts and taxation courts. It is also responsible for ensuring that the government does not pass legislation in contravention of the principles of Kemalism. Thus, in 1998, the Danistay annulled amendments that would have allowed children in the fifth year of schooling to attend religious instruction classes. The Danistay struck down the amendment as it violated the Law on Eight Years of Continuous Education which ensures ‘that young minds that have not yet fully grasped positive sciences and contemporary education should be not be given a theocratic education before reaching full consciousness and also to fulfil the requirements of the Law on the Unity of Education.’

9. More in Haider (2013).

http://www.fpsc.gov.pk

http://lums.edu.pk/content/fee-structure-875

C H A P T E R 7

The Cost in Time and Resources

Pakistan spends Rs. 500 billion (about 5 billion dollars) a year subsidizing loss-making state-owned companies. In 2012-13 , the Punjab governm ent spent Rs. 30 billion on building a mass transit bus system in L ahore.1 A nother Rs. 30 billion are earm arked to build a com parable system for Islam abad and Raw alpindi.2 T he state also spends millions o f dollars on paying handsome salaries to contract appointees and consultants hired on special pay scales; while tax collection languishes at 8 per cent o f the GDP, hundreds o f billions o f rupees are poured into pet projects, be it the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), provincial housing schemes, ‘universities’ in remote areas that would pu t Prince Potem kin to shame, or discretionary expenditure by the PM and members o f the national and provincial assemblies. A nd yet, when m oney is needed for civil service reforms, financial constraints are typically invoked. So Pakistan can waste hundreds o f billions o f rupees every year on farcical development projects— two-thirds o f which m oney is destined to be pilfered or dissipated— but cannot spare financial resources to reform the state apparatus. W ithout such reform, tax collection will continue to be pitiful in quantity and regressive in quality, corruption and m aladministration will continue to impose massive costs on the state and society, and a servile and incom petent bureaucracy will continue to operate as an instrum ent in the hands o f local, regional, and national mafias. T his situation suits the political leadership because a well paid, highly m otivated, and honest civil service will impede the arbitrariness and medievalism with which Pakistan’s rulers are accustomed to governing. Imagine a situation in which a minister who comes up with a self-serving proposal to spend on developm ent in his hom e area is stopped dead in his tracks by senior civil servants whom he cannot get

transferred for refusing to comply. Similarly, senior civil servants would themselves no t be in a position to arbitrarily punish their junior colleagues for raising technical, legal, and moral objections. The fact is that even if the federal governm ent were to set aside Rs. 300 billion a year for civil service reform and rehabilitation, the allocation would be dwarfed by what is already formally wasted on a routine basis.

In fact, the expenditure on a maximum package is likely to be far lower. Take national schools, for instance. T he annual intake o f students w ould be approxim ately 300 in each. A ssum ing th a t nobody drops or opts out, by the ninth year o f the national schools being in operation there would be 2,700 students per school or 5,400 students in all. The Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, which is Pakistan’s top-ranked higher education institution, has a total enrolment o f 7000-8000 (Bachelors, Masters, M .Phil., Ph.D .) and a total budget o f Rs. 1.2—1.4 billion per year. Even if we assume that each national school would cost twice as m uch as the university to run, the total annual expenditure would be Rs. 2.8 billion on one school and Rs. 5.6 billion on both. T he cost o f constructing the two could, in turn , be spread out over a seven- year period since the full infrastructure would not be needed as soon as the intake begins. An outlay o f 1 billion rupees a year per school, or Rs. 2 billion in all per year, w ould suffice to build a word-class campus (assuming embezzlement and commissions are kept to less than 20 per cent o f the total outlay), meaning Rs. 14 billion for the entire project. Even if a cost escalation o f 100 per cent is factored in, the total would be Rs. 28 billion, which is less than the proposed expenditure on the Islamabad-Rawalpindi mass transit bus system.

Turning to the CoS, the core requirem ent o f such an institution w ould be the judges (100 in all) needed to staff it. Since these judges would be deployed in provincial capitals as well as the federal capital, six buildings will be needed for office space. If Rs. 1 billion were allocated to the construction o f each CoS office, it w ould involve a com m itm ent o f Rs. 6 billion. I f the judges were paid Rs. 1 million a month, the annual salary bill would be Rs. 1.2 billion. T he support staff could be drawn from the rest o f the civilian


The Cost in Time and Resources 59bureaucracy. Again, these are not prohibitive costs when one considers that the annual budget o f the P M ’s house in 2011—12 was Rs. 1.37 billion while the presidency was given about Rs. 500 m illion, or th a t in the same fiscal year the total budget o f the M inistry o f Foreign Affairs was abo u t Rs. 12 billion . Far less expensive than the CoS would be the neutral bodies designed to oversee transfers, postings, prom otions, and discipline, as these w ould be attached to m inistries and w ould no t need additional space or staff. T he total num ber o f these neutral bodies could be fixed at 15, w ith some dealing with groups o f smaller ministries. T he most im portant expenditure here would be the salaries o f the five selected members o f each neutral body. W ith 15 such bodies, there would be 75 members in all, and if each member were paid Rs. 1 million a m onth , it would w ork out to a total o f Rs. 900 million per year. Again, this would be a very small outlay compared to the billions o f rupees m isappropriated or lost by the Fiigher Education Com m ission.3

The salary increase for civil service officers would perhaps be the most expensive item in terms o f recurrent expenditure. A new salary structure on the lines proposed above w ould be lim ited to the officers o f the regularly constituted services recruited through the FPSC. It would require additional services for intelligence, health, education, engineering, etc., to be constituted so that they could avail the revised salaries. The total num ber o f CSS officers is about30,000 ou t o f a civilian bureaucracy th a t is 2.5 m illion strong. Assuming that CSS officers are paid an average salary o f Rs. 500,000 per m onth (Rs. 6 m illion per year), the total salary bill w ould total about Rs. 180 billion per year. This may seem steep but is a price w orth paying in terms o f likely am elioration in corruption and m ism anagement as well as savings from no longer having to provide facilities, pensions, cars, and houses to civil servants.4 If, for instance, as a result o f im proved perform ance tax collection rises from 8—10 per cent of the GDP, or corruption is reduced by 10-20 per cent, the reforms would have more than paid for them selves.

N O T E S60 Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect

1. More in The News {2Q\?>b).2. The expenditure in Islamabad is estimated at Rs. 7.2 billion as road widening

will not be needed.3. This does not include the billions more requested and wasted on pet projects,

such as foreign university campuses in Pakistan, over the years ( The Express Tribune 2013).

4. Pakistan’s military is a class apart with regard to remuneration in cash and kind and reemployment of retired personnel, that combined help to ensure that senior officers retire as dollar millionaires or multi-millionaires (Siddiqa 2007).

C H A P T E R 8

Implementation Plan for the Reforms

Pakistan’s current predicam ent is not one that is conducive to hope for radical im provem ent. T he basic task before any responsible political leadership is that it m ust be brutally honest in its assessment o f the situation. Pakistan is headed for adm inistrative collapse, financial exhaustion, and possibly irreversible political and ideological upheavals unless the following critical course corrections are carried out w ithin the next five to ten years.1. The first and basic course correction is that political interference

in the day-to-day running o f the state machinery must be brought under control a n d reduced as much as possible. T he cu rren t government m ust formulate and then adhere to a policy o f de facto security o f tenure (three years in a particular post) for all civil service officers (Grades 17—22) o f federal cadres. W hat that means is that no more arbitrary transfers o f federal state servants will be perm itted by prime ministerial directive to the Establishment Division and any requests fo r premature transfer w ill be reviewed by an independent panel o f eminent persons constituted to advise the Prime M inister and Cabinet on this matter. T his is som ething th a t can be done w ith in days if the political will exists.

2. A n across the board recruitment ban on Grades 1—10 in the federal government should go into effect. This ban should stay in place w ithou t any exception for at least the first two years o f the reform period. Provincial governments may be allowed to recruit additional personnel provided the provinces pay the salaries of additional personnel from tax revenues they raise on their own.

This will shift the fiscal responsibility for new hires away from the central governm ent.

3. The current government can dem and that all elected representatives will relinquish any position, however honorary, that they hold in any other organization, be it an N G O , a private enterprise, or other governm ent departm ent. This will be done to minimize conflicts o f interest.

4. A calibrated awareness campaign can be launched to explain to the public why it is vital to insulate the state apparatus from political interference. The awareness campaign will seek to highlight how nepotism, patronage, and violation o f merit lead to scarcity o f resources, oppression, and injustice in society, and how that ultimately affects the individual. The media ought to be enlisted by the governm ent to spread this message in preparation for more substantive reforms.

5. T he current governm ent can constitute a Parliamentary commission to draft a Constitutional A m endm ent providing constitutional protections to civil servants at all levels. This commission will have one year to draft the necessary legislation. If there is insufficient political support for an am endment, then the governm ent will proceed with the drafting o f a new or revised Civil Services Act that can be passed by a simple majority.

6. T he voluntary freeze on arbitrary transfers, an awareness campaign, and initiation o f a legislative process that will eventually grant the civil service constitutional protection or, failing that, enhanced legal protection, will lead to immediate and tangible im provem ents in the quality o f governance and also inspire confidence in the future o f the state by bearing witness to the w isdom o f its leadership. T hese m easures, while absolutely critical, will need to be accom panied by reforms likely to be resisted by a bureaucratic upper stratum that has long lost the respect o f junior- and m iddle-ranking officers and is devoid o f real leadership qualities.

7. T he government m ust pledge that it will im plem ent the m onetization and indexation o f pay scales at competitive m arket rates for the officer grades (17—22) within three years o f the initiation o f the reform period. T he idea should be to attract the best


Implementation Plan fo r the Reforms 63

talent in the country to the civil service and pay them enough so that they can live well on their salaries and do n o t crave facilities or rem uneration in kind. C o rru p t m em bers o f the apparatus who abuse power and secure facilities and services that fa r exceed their nominal salaries as well as support and menial sta ff who w ill fear tha t monetization is a prelude to m aking them redundant will likely resist such reforms. However, m any junior and m id-career officers o f the federal cadres, who otherwise struggle to m ake ends m eet, will support this decision if it includes indexation. Reaching o u t to them and encouraging them to educate others can help create a reform constituency w ithin the civilian bureaucracy.In itia l rec ru itm en t to the civilian bureaucracy needs to be rethought. Rather than a single com bined examination, it would help if separate services held their own exam inations adm inistered by the FPSC. Each service should have certain requirements (for example, taxation services should require a Masters degree in economics, business, public adm inistration, relevant law degree, mathematics, statistics). A basic descriptive qualifying examination may also be introduced in subjects like English and current affairs and only candidates who pass this stage should be eligible for examination in other subjects. Each service can be provided a budget to project itself in the media and draw better candidates to the recruitm ent pool. This reform would need two to three years to be properly operationalized.Initial training should revert to the pattern that prevailed during the first decade o f independence for the CSP cadre w ith one year o f foreign education at leading institu tions in the U K followed by one or two years o f specialized training. The C T P will, therefore, become redundant and can be phased ou t over two or three years. In the m eantim e, the feasibility o f creating national schools to prepare future civil servants and groom them for leadership from higher secondary education through to a Masters program m e prior to final testing and recruitm ent to a service, ought to be studied and the technicalities worked out. Creating the national schools will be a generational project for attracting qualified faculty, building infrastructure, and organiz-

ing m odern curricula. This will easily take a decade, and the first batch o f national school graduates will not be prepared to enter state service until ten years after the schools are launched.

10. The creation o f statutory neutral bodies to oversee the prom otions, transfers, and discipline o f officers is something the governm ent can do if it wants to secure its legacy. The composition o f these bodies may vary depend ing on the scope o f their authority. There can be separate bodies for different services or m inistries. T he m odalities m ay vary bu t, once the neutral bodies are set in m otion, their members will have a fixed nonrenewable tenure. Ministers and senior civil servants will lose their ability to directly influence transfers or prom otions and effect ‘discipline’ in these neutral bodies. This is another m idterm reform and will require three years to get im plem ented properly.

11. The creation o f a CoS to respond to complaints made by citizens against the bureaucracy, carry ou t investigations, and impose penalties on errant officers may also be considered. To ensure the prestige and neutrality o f such a council, it should enjoy constitutional cover and have clearly specified powers of investigation and enforcem ent. Building such an institution and dealing with its teething problems will likely take several governm ent terms in the existing electoral cycle. It will thus require a degree o f consensus between the government and the opposition and can also be considered a generational project for it will take time for the CoS to earn respect and prestige.

12. The creation o f an all-Pakistan Administrative Research Service to keep exam ining the bureaucratic structure and proposing improvements could help enhance the effectiveness o f reforms and reduce reliance on tem porary commissions and foreign expertise/models. There is, o f course, a real danger that such an organization will have barely gotten off the ground in terms o f substantive research by the tim e the next elections came along. It can, however, be initiated.


Identifying and Neutralizing Opposition to Reforms

A sincere, well-advised, and determ ined government can im plem ent the reform s suggested in th is m on ograph . In the lo ng term , rebuilding Pakistan’s civilian bureaucracy is the ideal way to restore balance to the civ il-m ilitary equation. Even w ith w holehearted effort and wise leadership, any attem pt to substantially reform the state apparatus will run in to opposition, some o f which has the potential to halt or even reverse progress. The sources o f this opposition include the judiciary, the senior civil service, the political class, the academia, the intelligentsia, the civil society, and the international donor community.

W hile Pakistan’s superior judiciary has extracted generous salaries and benefits for itself and enjoys a retirem ent age o f 65 (against the norm o f 62 years for judges o f high courts, and the even lower 60 years for civil servants), it can be expected to respond favourably when petitioners file suits against some o f the major reforms. The reform that is most likely to draw such attention would be related to the pay scale and salary structure. Those left out o f the pay hike would clamour for their salaries to be enhanced in the same way. Since the state cannot afford to pay 2.5 million civilian employees high wages, it will be vulnerable to judicial decisions in favour of such petitions. T he judiciary is likely to seethe at being left out o f the salary improvements on the executive side o f the apparatus, its own generous com pensation packages notw ithstanding. O ne way around this is to include the 1,800 judges in the reform s and increase their pays, especially at the Supreme C ourt level, thereby p re-em pting them from issuing decisions against the reform s. Recently retired C hief Justice Iftikhar M uham m ad C haudhry drew

an annual salary o f nearly Rs. 9 million, received (and still receives) official accomm odation, and was entitled to a chauffer-driven car with 600 litres o f petrol, free medical treatm ent for him and family, and free utilities.1 Associate judges in the Supreme C ourt receive about 8.7 million rupees as salary per year plus similar privileges, while High C ourt judges receive Rs. 8 .3 -8 .4 million as salary every year.2 The PPP-led governm ent was eager to provide the judges with generous rem uneration on account o f their nuisance value— else it makes little sense for a judge w ith no executive power to be paid ten times more than an administrative secretary or an inspector- general o f the police.3 A nother way around this is to provide the reforms w ith com prehensive constitutional or legal cover via an Act o f Parliament. It is here that the tragedy o f the standardized pay scales introduced by Bhutto hits hom e for they have created a universal sense o f entitlem ent regardless o f the disproportionate im portance o f the officers in a hierarchical set-up.4 Also, certain groups including the superior judiciary, the H E C ,5 and the military can sidestep the spirit and substance o f standard pay scales.

Senior civil servants will not to be too happy if their wings are clipped when it comes to ordering transfers o f subordinates. Being answerable to neutral bodies will also cause tussles between secretaries and ministers and generate considerable acrimony, given the long-standing servility o f the form er and the arbitrariness o f the latter. Certain services, such as the PAS, will not be pleased with the professionalization of the civilian bureaucracy for it will limit their ability to colonize other ministries and cadres. Here, the hope is that the incentive in the form o f good salaries, com bined with improved accountability, can contain this resistance. Certain exemptions will have to be granted as well so that those officers who have completed enough years of service to secure a full pension can be allowed to cash ou t if they wish. Alternatively, pensions can be gradually phased out for the civil service officer corps.

T he political class is also no t going to take kindly to the loss of the power o f transfer. Politicians will feel that, w ithout this power, civil servants will no t do their bidding. O f course, that is exactly the point o f the reforms— to insulate civil servants from such interference so that they do their jobs according to the law and govern


m ent policies. A corrupt and compromised bureaucracy also serves to facilitate corruption among politicians for it is rather difficult to steal or waste from the state w ithout bureaucratic abetment. Here, the determ ination and com m itm ent o f the government’s top leaders will be sorely tested as they will be under trem endous pressure to help their party members intervene in the adm inistration. Since the cooperation o f these party m em bers will be instrum ental in providing constitutional and legal cover to the proposed reforms, government leaders will face an uphill battle.

O f all o f Pakistan’s power constituencies, the military ought to be the most eager to help in reviving the civil bureaucracy.6 History, however, teaches us that m ilitary regimes have generally proven hostile or indifferent to such efforts. In the current conditions, with the army stretched thin by the Pakistani Taliban and the first- ever transfer o f power from one elected governm ent to another hav ing taken place in M ay 2013 , th e resolve o f the m ilitary leadership to in terfere w ith dom estic policy issues is open to question. W hile the imbalance continues to evolve in the military’s favour, situational factors inhibit open exploitation o f this trend. Despite these constraints, it should be obvious to the military that it does not have answers to Pakistan’s internal problems and that a professional and honest civil service elite is needed to rebuild the state and restore its administrative writ.

The academia, the intelligentsia, and the civil society will likely raise a hue and cry against any perceived im provem ent in the condition o f the babus. Given how all three have prospered— thanks to the H EC , media expansion, and foreign donors, respectively— such antagonism w ould be hypocritical. T h a t said, the state has little to fear from angry write-ups in newspapers over the restoration of a colonial or elitist mode of administration— the media has practically no effect on actual state perform ance since the state is too weak to respond constructively to criticism. International donors, however, are another matter. Musharraf’s devolution plan was backed by international donors, the BISP enjoys their backing, they have consultants engaged with the government or deployed in ministries working on policy matters, and their approval is eagerly sought by Pakistan’s intellectually vacuous elite. T h a t this approval is sup

Identifying and Neutralizing Opposition to Reforms 67

ported by hard currency grants and loans practically ensures that sane advice from w ithin the country is dismissed in favour o f the fashionable and lucrative offerings on the donor-sponsored agenda.

T he bureaucracy is now perceived to be so devoid o f professionalism that its members m uch prefer it if local U nited Nations franchises write policies for them or allow them to hire consultants to do so. Civil servants, having long lost self-respect on account o f the desperate circumstances o f their service, are more interested in getting a vehicle, a laptop, a free trip to a fancy hotel, a small honorarium or internships for their children, rather than take their own work seriously. Keeping the donors in good hum our is also im portant as it can help secure post-retirem ent em ploym ent and lucrative in- service deputation assignments— a necessity for many honest civil servants and som ething desirable for others whose m aterial and moral insecurity don’t let them call it a day. If Pakistan’s bureaucracy were to be better paid, internally accountable, organized into professional services, and secure against arbitrary transfers, the need for donors and consultants would dim inish, external penetration o f the state w ould be reduced, and sovereignty— that favourite term o f Pakistan’s leaders— could actually be asserted. An improved bureaucracy capable o f m aintain ing order, collecting taxes, and delivering public services would strengthen the hands o f the governm ent in its external dealings, something that is domestically im perative and strategically desirable. Any advice derived from south Asian history and Pakistan’s tragic experience is intellectually threatening and basically unwelcome from the donors’ perspective. If such advice were to secure governm ent support, donors could be expected to resist and advocate otherwise putting the reform programme under pressure. This pressure, by itself, would no t be sufficient to deter a com m itted government from its course but, when com bined with opposition from others, the resulting coalescence may be too great to resist. O ne cannot, therefore, be sanguine about reform prospects.


Identifying and Neutralizing Opposition to Reforms 69 N O T E S

1. For more, see Gishkori (2013b).2. Ibid.3. Simply paying judges more does not help improve the criminal justice system

(police, judiciary, jails) and has done little to improve the quality and effectiveness of judicial decision-making. The problem being that the judiciary is utterly dependent on the executive for investigation, prosecution, and enforcement, and the poor condition of the 625,000-strong police force makes it practically impossible to do any of these things with tolerable efficiency. Intriguingly, within the police, the Motorways Police is paid much more than the regular police. Thus, in Pakistan, a policeman whose primary function is to hand you a fine for over-speeding based on a computer read out is paid twice as much as the policeman charged with investigating murders, thefts, and kidnapping. While the Motorways Police has succeeded in making major highways safer, other branches of the police that are charged with protecting the life and property of citizens need greater attention. Competent and honest officers prefer to get postings to the motorways police on account of better pay.

4. On 18 June 2013, the Islamabad High Court ordered the government and all federal institutions to pay their employees a 20 per cent raise on salaries. This court order was the result of cash-strapped autonomous organizations delaying payment of the raise or refusing to pay it altogether on the grounds that the original notification concerned only federal ministries and regularly constituted services. Writ Meditation No. 1212/2013, Parvez Iqbal, etc., Versus the Federation of Pakistan, etc. Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui decided that all federal government employees were entitled to the 20 per cent special allowance granted in March 2013 and should be paid the raise with effect from the date of the notification.Reference the HEC, better pay and prospects have improved the size and research output of Pakistan’s leading universities even as it has facilitated the proliferation of small and underdeveloped higher education institutions in remote areas or outside of major metropolitan centres. The per capita output of research per faculty member in Pakistan is now greater than India and the total number of research publications per year has surged from about4,000 in 2010-11 to 6,200 in 2012-13 {The Nation 2013).A r Vice Marshal (Retd) Shahzad Chaudhry agreed that the military’s prize quality, its internal order, and severe discipline diminished its own creativity while civilian institutions, more accustomed to the chaos and rough and tumble of life outside the barracks, were better suited to generating creative

5.

6.

7 0 Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspectsolutions to Pakistan’s problems but suffered from an acute lack of order and discipline. The challenge was to improve the quality of the civilian institutions and restoring to them a greater measure of order and discipline without compromising their potential creativity (Farooq 2012).

C H A P T E R 10

Conclusion

History, reason, and the imperatives o f survival dem and that Pakistan focus on rebuilding its civilian state apparatus. The myriad problems faced by Pakistan’s citizens are the direct consequences o f adm inistrative breakdow n, w hich also hinders governm ents— civilian or m ilitary— from delivering on their prom ises and renders them vulnerable to instability and overthrow. Legitimacy is ultim ately about capacity, a po in t evidently lost on Pakistan’s rulers. Capacity is, for the m ost part, administrative and executive in nature, especially in a bureaucratic state like Pakistan. Improving the quality o f the adm inistration will require comprehensive reforms and these will take time as well as m onetary resources. The argum ent that Pakistan does not have these resources is easily refuted by the vast sums squandered on personal projects and subsidies. T hat Pakistan is running ou t o f tim e to pu t reforms in place is palpable— the longer they are delayed, the more they will cost, and the deeper the rot they seek to redress will set. A nd yet, the alternative to administrative reform is adm inistrative collapse. It would no t be unfair to say that m any civilian institutions have already sunk to such a level o f dysfunction or non-functionality that they are barely kept alive by large financial transfers desperately needed elsewhere. T he political leadership, the bureaucratic elite, and the m ilitary are all to blame for this situation. Together, they have created a cast-iron pattern o f arbitrariness, o f inertia, o f heedlessness.

There should, therefore, be no illusions about the prospect for meaningful reform. The non-seriousness o f Pakistan’s rulers, their stim ulation o f populist appetites th a t the state cannot hope to satiate, and their personalized and arb itrary approach tow ards governance merge into a nexus to render the possibility for effective change remote. M inor tinkering, in the form o f an executive order

here or a procedural change there, is o f course possible, though the only wide-ranging reforms likely to appeal to Pakistan’s rulers are those that increase their own power. B hutto’s dem olition job on the civil service structure and M usharraf’s devolution are classic examples o f administrative reforms being consciously introduced to reduce the autonomy and integrity o f the services and make them more vulnerable to politicization and military intervention. N o one in power seems to have understood th a t w ith o u t a com p eten t and independen t- m inded state apparatus led by an officer class groomed for leadership and elevated above petty material concerns, governance simply cannot be made efficacious. Regrettably, this wilful ignorance, now generously patronized by international donors, is deeply rooted in South Asia’s historical experience o f governance and Pakistan has got the worst o f it on account o f the disadvantageous circumstances o f its creation and the inferior w esternization experience o f its leadership.

This paper is a long remonstrance based on that tragic history. It has attem pted to present a solution that m ight bring about the salvation o f the Pakistani state— even today, the residual integrity and com petence o f the civil service officer corps is sufficient to reboot the state machinery and channelize it towards constructive purposes.1 This remonstrance will almost certainly meet the same fate as so many earlier attem pts to advise the rulers, for if there is one th ing that South Asian history in general, and Pakistan’s in particular, has proven it is that here there is no power in wisdom and no wisdom in power.

N O T E

1. US concern over Pakistan’s stability is well documented and finds its way into journalistic accounts. The post-drawdown scenario in Afghanistan make it all the more vital that Pakistan does not go under. US advisers and leaders appear to be at a loss of what to do and how to target such assistance as their government is willing to provide. For a perspective rooted in diplomatic history but oriented towards the future of US—South Asia relations, see Evans (2012).


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Pakistan’s civil-military equation has long been unstable with repeated interruptions of the constitutional and democratic order. This monograph examines Pakistan’s troubled record of civil-military relations from the perspective of history. It holds that Pakistan’s problems are not unique while emphasizing the importance of seeing the civil component of the equation in an administrative as well as political light.

While much has been written about democratic consolidation and the role of political actors in the process, this monograph’s assessment is that the overall capacity of Pakistan’s civilian state apparatus needs to be improved in order for it to deliver. The lessons from this assessment are that unless Pakistan’s civil administration is rehabilitated and reformed, no long-term improvement in civilian capacity to perform and govern effectively will happen. Even if democratic governments complete their tenures in such a context, their overall lack of performance will delegitimize democratic institutions while enabling the military to retain effective control of all key decision-making structures.

Unlike a traditional historical analysis, this monograph goes beyond dissection of the problem to prescription and charts a course for Pakistan that, while firmly rooted in the experience of continental bureaucratic states, might allow for the gradual and meaningful restoration of civilian ascendancy in the Pakistani polity.

Ilhan Niaz, Ph.D, is most recently the author of Old World Empires: Cultures of Power and Governance in Eurasia (New York, 2014).

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Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect of Pakistan's Civil-Military Imbalance

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Transcript of Understanding and Addressing the Administrative Aspect of Pakistan's Civil-Military Imbalance