Daily Times

Civil Bureaucracy forms an integral part of the governments and they do a lot more than just execute policies. Simply put, it is the manpower that runs the public sector at all levels of the government. Pakistan inherited its administrative apparatus from the British India. Civil Service was the pivot of this administrative machinery. The erstwhile Indian Civil Service (ICS) and its allied cadres of Central Services performed a key role in buttressing the British Raj in India. However after independence the image of civil service gradually eroded in the public eye because of allegations of inefficiency and corruption.

Many economists and analysts considered bureaucracies in the developing countries to be engines of growth and development during the 1950s to 1970s. There was also appreciation of the role of Pakistan’s bureaucracy, especially in the context of its role in the development during the 1960s. At that time it was believed that the bureaucratic elites and public institutions were required to provide leadership, order and stability in the developing countries. However, it was in the late 1980s and 1990s, when the development economists including the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) especially the World Bank began to question the ability of the bureaucracy to promote development in the third world.

Simultaneously, the issues relating to corruption, inefficiency, bloated size and sheer lack of accountability began to be highlighted. It was at this time when the issue of governance was brought to the fore in the World Bank’s conference on the Development Economics in 1991. It was acknowledged that governance was not only a matter of economic development but it entailed a complex set of cultural, political and institutional factors according to which the quality of governance required efficient working of institutions within the given political, social and cultural milieu.

The overall conduct and the morality of Pakistan Civil bureaucracy especially the senior cadre has visibly declined in last three decades. The systematic erosion of the writ of law; disregard of official code of conduct and low levels of morality are by now manifest through the generally low quality of public services. Service delivery invariably suffers from issues of quality and rampant corruption. At lower levels, the rent seeking is petty, but then there are extremely high levels of corruption which have become refined and overly complex lately.

Morality can be discussed from various dimensions; broadly from the perspective of legal, perceptual and behavioral and these could be divided into six components.(1) Legal, it has an ethical dimension, meaning holding public office means, holding people’s trust; second, it implies upholding, abiding by and enforcing rule of law. (2) Perceptual, minimal use of discretionary powers, patronage and misuse of authority; fourth, popular perception that bureaucracy is arrogant, corrupt, time serving and perpetuates status quo;(3) Behavioral, it violates its own ‘Code of Conduct’ and has an ostentatiously life style, particularly the higher civil service; finally, it has become increasingly clannish, patronage driven and lost professional competence and shows little respect for public welfare.

The evolution of administrative system in the advanced countries emerged within a socio- historical context based on industrial revolution, rise of capitalist production, separation of the state from religion

The bureaucracy in Pakistan is generally believed to be pervasively corrupt; inefficient and bloated. It is criticized for numerous ills ranging from favoritism; misuse of discretionary powers, unresponsiveness, low morality and downright corruption of various forms. The bureaucratic corruption is believed to be not just restricted to acquisition of wealth through illegal means but involving an array of misdeeds by which power is exercised in an improper manner and for ulterior motives. At the heart of misuse of public office lies the use of discretionary powers to grant selective exemptions, discrimination in the application of rules, obstruction of justice and so on. The powerful and corrupt bureaucrats are believed to work in collision with powerful and corrupt politicians, business houses and or rely on the predominantly patronage based system to secure their lucrative postings.

The living standards and the overall lifestyle of a predominant section of the senior bureaucracy is yet another evidence of the existing value systems; morality and to what extent there is compliance with the official code of conduct. There are very few bureaucrats who would stand up to illegal practices, wrong doing and patronage in official dealings and face the consequences. Conversely the official cadres are packed with an officialdom which is part and parcel of the institutionalized rent seeking culture prevalent in the corridors of power in the country. The senior bureaucracy many a times does not have the moral authority to take cognizance of institutional corruption within their departments as they themselves have become what is commonly known as the, ‘part of the system’.

Democratic institutions pattern depends on whether bureaucratic structures preceded democracy or whether it was democratic institutions that created the bureaucratic structure. In United States, the bureaucratic structure was designed subsequent to the democracy and war of independence where the concepts of democracy became the overarching ethos of the society on which the governance structures were raised. In Germany, the governance structures existed prior to democracy and democracy had to be planted and institutions molded to democracy in the post-World War II era with care to guard against any despotic regime again. The case of Pakistan is similar to that of Germany in the sense that democracy was injected subsequent to the independence over and above the bureaucratic structures installed by the British to primarily serve the interests of the colonial masters. As such the basic principles of democracy could not take roots with the result that despite being a parliamentary democracy, the power remained with the erstwhile elites.

The evolution of administrative system in the advanced countries emerged within a socio- historical context based on industrial revolution, rise of capitalist production, separation of the state from religion etc. Conversely most of the developing countries adopted the western bureaucratic models without experiencing similar developments. It is believed, this has led to a considerable degree of incongruity between the society and bureaucracy in many developing countries especially in the context of politics, economy and culture.

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The writer is a freelancer, has done MPA