Daily Times

A discerning student of Pakistan’s history should be able to identify a common thread in all military-led administrations of the country. Without exception, every coup-maker has leaned on local governments for legitimacy. Similarly, without exception, every civilian politician at the national level has attempted to curb local government.
The national project has always attempted to weaken provincial and parochial identities instead of building on them, even though the latter may have contributed much more substantially to the national project. One unit was the original sin of the national project. The idea of having administrative units is one unit rehashed. The underlying idea is to make the existing constituent units, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa irrelevant as the one unit idea attempted to do in the 1950s. This strategy is bound to fail because it militates against the historical experience of these provinces and how these were first constituted after being colonised by the British. More importantly, it goes against the spirit of the Lahore Resolution as the basic document of the country as well as our fragile federalism that we need to safeguard at all costs.
However, what the MQM says needs to be investigated. The underlying grievance that the representatives of submerged subnational communities within the constituent units have is that they do not have a piece of the sovereignty pie. Predictably, they point to India where new linguistic states have emerged out of the original colonial provinces, forgetting that even there the issue remains an extremely contentious one.
In Pakistan, as in India, the issue is that the conventional nation state model without suitable amendments in line with our requirements fails to appreciate the multiple identities of the citizens of the state. Before the British colonised the subcontinent, the people of this region existed in overlapping sets of multiple identities where contending the sovereignty of identity groups was negotiated and power was shared on several levels. The British brought with them European notions of nations and nation states.
Consequently, instead of multiple identities being reconciled with each other to arrive at a cohesive Pakistani identity (suggested by Faiz Ahmad Faiz in his essay on Pakistani culture), we have sought to, at varying times, impose either a Pakistani or a Muslim identity or both, top down, at the expense of other identities. Multiple identities — unity in diversity — if and when expressed as functions of political geography can lend Pakistan that elusive, cohesive Pakistani national identity that we have been searching for for decades now. Pakistan needs to be a federation of communities in addition to being a federation of constituent units.
In Pakistan, one feels the idea of reinventing the wheel is bound to be a disaster. Instead of rethinking provincial boundaries, the focus should be on ensuring devolution of sovereignty at the local level that will satisfy in great measure the minority subnational communities within the subnational constituent units. This is what Musharraf’s local bodies system attempted to do. Unfortunately, the nazim (mayor) system was too complicated and incomprehensible.
Instead, we need elected tehsil (sub-district) boards that ensure representation of all sections of society. These boards should not comprise more than 11 members with four general members who can be from any community, three reserved women members, one reserved labour member, one reserved peasant member and two reserved minority members, all elected by popular adult franchise. They should choose from amongst themselves a chairperson of the board. The function of this basic unit of governance would be presiding over the administration of local bureaucracies at the tehsil level in addition to acting as arbitration councils for local disputes to supplement the formal legal system. The chairperson should be the chief executive of the tehsil and should form a veritable bridge between the local MPAs and the populace at large. Furthermore, all the tehsil boards should have a national convention every year in the federal capital. This national convention should act as a de facto third house of parliament where the local representatives can come together and discuss pressing local issues and give expression to the wider public opinion for the National Assembly and Senate to act on. This tricameral, triangular interaction between the federal government, provincial governments and local governments would ensure that people at the very grassroots level are given a say in national affairs and that all sections, especially marginalised sections, are represented in full measure. This system will deal a deathblow to biradari (community) and caste politics as well as ensuring greater cooperation amongst various communities.
The underlying principle for such reorganisation of the Pakistani state is as follows: Pakistan is a multicultural, multireligious, multiethnic, multilingual and multinational state. A Pakistani citizen has multiple identities encompassing multiple situations and multiple classes. The reconciliation of these identities on individual, local, provincial and state levels can contribute to making Pakistan one whole. This principle can be given the fullest expression only through a rational and elegant local bodies system integrated with the national and provincial systems of the country. The result would be a real federation, not just of constituent units but a federation of communities.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com