Editorial
Pakistan’s federal government refuses to shrink, and the reason is not administrative necessity but the protection of two deeply entrenched interests. The bureaucracy demands posts and positions all the way up to Grade 22, while political parties require ministries, advisors, and special assistants as instruments of patronage. Between these two forces, any serious effort at rightsizing is quietly buried before it begins.
The constitutional reality is straightforward. The federal government can be reduced to five or six core ministries without any loss of essential governance. A vast number of functions currently held at the federal level belong, by the spirit of the constitution, to the provinces. Yet redundant ministries, divisions, and departments continue to exist not because they serve the public but because they serve those in power. They are vessels for authority, privilege, and reward.
The consequences fall on the entire country. Structural reform is deferred indefinitely. Public expenditure remains inflated. And when fiscal pressure mounts, the federal government turns to the provinces and demands a greater share of their resources to sustain a structure that should not exist in its current form. The provinces are effectively asked to fund federal inefficiency.
This arrangement is not accidental. It is the product of a political economy in which the state is treated as a prize to be divided rather than an institution to be reformed. Until the federal government makes genuine reductions in its size, its expenditure, and its unnecessary architecture, fiscal discipline will remain a talking point and effective governance a distant promise.
This argument is developed in detail in The Bureaucratic Coup, published by Republic Policy Think Tank and available at Vanguard Books, Liberty Books, Readings, Kitab Sarai, Sang-e-Meel, Saeed Book Stores, and others across Pakistan. Contact for home delivery: 0300 9552542.
