Daily Times

People in our neck of the woods seek magic bullets and exotic Talismans for solutions to our problems as a matter of habit. Begotten out of centuries of lassitude and fatalism the search for mentors, deux ex machinas, and quick fixes has become part of our planning DNA. Role models like Muhatir and Ataturk keep coming back to remind us of our elusive quest for an ideal leadership model. Niall Ferguson and Ace Moglu point the way in their seminal work, “Why Nations Fail” when they mention of institutions geared towards development and merit. What we have instead are extractive institutions and rent-seeking development institutions pandering to the needs of a Garrison State and rentier economy. A Garrison State as per Harold Lasswell is a state where the specialists on violence capture the leadership. In such states the population is sufficiently socialized in the dangers of threat and the need to fight those threats as a moral or religious duty.

A rentier economy, on the other hand, is an economy where the state institutions are geared towards facilitating a business or financial elite that thrives on state patronage and artificial protection to extract rents in return for little investment in national development. In rentier economies, the tax regime is structured to benefit the rich and the powerful while business environment is tilted towards the politically connected through bureaucratic sleights of hands. The result is the transfer of national resources from the poor to the rich and an ever-widening income gap between the rich and the powerful. Pakistan’s Gini Coefficient and Estaban Ray indices clearly indicate the economic polarization that is universally regarded as the mother of public grievance. What then is the solution to our socio-economic woes? In keeping with our national proclivities for magic solutions, I propose a Penta-Silver bullet to rid us of five maladies that stunt our national development.

The five maladies that need cures are economy, administration, law and order, justice, and civil-military balance. The Penta-Silver bullet to all the above national maladies is the restructuring and development of institutions that promote institutionalized decision making geared towards development and not extraction of resources. The first is the economy which has remained hostage to extractive institutions that promote crony capitalism by doling out favours based on political patronage. The state-owned entities like PIA, and Steel Mills are a stark reminder of the limitations of our economic managers from the public sector. The unfair tax regime targeting poor through indirect taxation and levying excessive taxes on the industry while keeping the prices of industrial inputs like electricity and gas exorbitantly high discourages genuine entrepreneurship, leaving the arena open to rent-seeking entrepreneurs.

The five maladies that need cures are economy, administration, law and order, justice, and civil-military balance. The Penta-Silver bullet to all the above national maladies is the restructuring and development of institutions that promote institutionalized decision making geared towards development and not extraction of resources

The remedy lies in a tax regime that is broad-based and equitable encouraging willing tax compliance tax through rationalized tax slabs. The gas and power prices should be kept low in comparison with prices in the region to make our industry viable and exports competitive. A single institution should make policies and regulate power infrastructure on the lines of one window operation covering renewables, thermal, nuclear, and transmission and distribution system under one umbrella. The government should get out of all businesses forcing autonomous and semi-autonomous entities to cede control to the private sector, retaining only regulatory and policy-making roles. The oil and gas exploration should be given top priority to reduce dependence on energy imports. The oil exploration areas that had hitherto fore remained unexplored should be opened up for bidding and offered on incentives to local and foreign international oil exploration firms.

The second aspect requiring attention is administration. The commission on governance reforms under Ishrat Hussain might still be analyzing these issues but there is a definite need to effect quick reforms. The antiquated district administrative system based on District Commissioners has failed to deliver. We need to bring the services’ delivery closer to the people and the best way to do so is by empowering the local governments. The federal and provincial governments need to devolve the powers of revenue collection, policing, civic services’ provisioning, and law and order to the local governments. The empowered local governments should be served by a district bureaucracy having line departments headed by specialists answerable for their domain’s performance to local government. Such an organization would ideally gell with empowered local government heads like mayors or nazims. The country should be divided into smaller administrative units for better service delivery and governance.

The law and order cannot improve without a first rate and competent police force that operates without political pressure. The present police structure needs complete revamp. The police force should be properly resourced and equipped to deal with the urban terrorism, organized crime and law and order. Public oversight and accountability of police should be ensured through “Police Oversight Institutions” at federal, provincial, and local government tiers. Control of illegal entrants, smuggling, and drug running should be entrusted to special wings of police in concert with civilian intelligence agencies. The civil and military intelligence agencies should work in concert to facilitate police and para-military forces in their law enforcement functions. Joint intelligence sharing at Interior Ministry level should be ensured for timely dissemination of valuable intelligence information.

Justice being the fountainhead of all good or evil in a society needs our top priority. Our present justice system is configured against the poor. The state of lower judiciary does not inspire any confidence where the litigants are fleeced by a coterie of corrupt officials and lawyers. The system is heavily tilted in favour of rich and influential segment of society. A small crime by a poor person attracts quick retribution whereas the powerful exploits legal loopholes with connivance of lawyers. It is a system that offers rents to lawyers at the cost of clients. In such a system justice would always be delayed as the interests of the lawyers and clients clash. Expecting that the judiciary and legal community would reform itself is a fallacy. Strong Chief Justices like Iftikhar Chaudry and Saqib Nisar did not attempt to reform judiciary or to discipline lawyers due to institutional incapacity to cure own malady.

It is time the parliament established some balance between the judiciary, executive and parliament with each institution keeping checks on others. There is a need for a judicial accountability by parliament through specially constituted “Judicial Oversight Commission” comprising members of Parliament and legal experts from civil society. The Judicial Oversight Commission should be empowered to hold judiciary accountable based on rigorous performance appraisal. All judicial promotions should be vetted through this commission. The system of spoils giving rise to interminably long litigation should be discouraged by setting a time limit to dispose of the cases. Frivolous litigation should be discouraged through a preliminary filtering of the litigation requests by special law firms under government control.

The civil-military balance needs to be instituted through capacity building and empowerment of such institutions like Ministry of Defence, National Security Council, Defence Committee of Cabinet, and Joint Staff Headquarters. The parliamentary oversight of the armed forces should be ensured through civilian institutions with proper policy making and decision making support staff. The National Command Authority vested with decision making about employment of strategic assets should be overseen by a panel of experts giving independent inputs to Prime Minister. The national security and foreign policy making domain should be dominated by the civilian experts and political leadership whereas hard core military domains to be the bailiwick of the military like in mature democracies. The Penta-Silver bullet is worth trying even at the cost of failure.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST

Published in Daily Times, March 25^th 2019.