Naeem Afzal
Recently, I’ve been living in a city where my experience with the quality of community life leads me to believe that solving modern problems is beyond the capacity of the old bureaucratic setup. Most of our cities remain crowded, dusty, and unfit for pedestrian walks. Even at dawn, air is not transparent. Traffic management is utterly poor. Children, the elderly, and women are scared of coming out because stray dogs welcome them at every corner of the streets.
Who’s the authority to manage the cities? In the current bureaucratic setup, assuming the negligible role of the local government, for a tehsil, an Assistant Commissioner (AC); for a district, a Deputy Commissioner (DC); and for a division, a Commissioner are office bearers to run and manage cities. On the sidelines, other offices also exist, like municipal corporations or metropolitan corporations, which are ‘just’ offices with little role or authority to manage cities, except in large metropolitan areas like Lahore and Karachi. Theoretically MCs exist, but in practice they are nowhere.
This bureaucratic setup is short of capacity to solve the complex challenges of governance in cities. I agree that the colonial period, which produced this bureaucracy, was ideal for white masters to maintain law and order. Now, we have complex cities with complex challenges: urbanization, water management, traffic, and air quality are visible problems that were of least concern to the British. I have a few reasons to believe that we need modern HR departments, experts, and professionals who can deliver public services, not just extend the status quo.
Firstly, managing urbanization sprawl needs professional urban planners. In our cities, we have a ‘closed-administrative’ setup, where a generalist is pushed to solve all specialized problems. For instance, the office of AC can’t hire professional experts in urban planning from the markets. Even the government can’t do it: a specialist in water management can’t be a secretary. Because the government has to choose from the civil service pools. In the words of Nadeem-ul-Haq, we need professionals and experts who can solve our cities’ complex governance challenges.
Secondly, the current bureaucratic setup discourages markets. Globally, cities are the engines of growth. They have the large markets, companies, and corporations. They are the generators of jobs and, most importantly, are the products of efficient markets. They have loose HR departments where professionals are hired to solve problems, not to maintain “Wadera Culture.” There’s an unrestricted entry and exit mechanism for experts, unlike in our case, where an AC once inducted in BPS-17 must be promoted to BPS-22, irrespective of his performance. For instance, an expert from the World Bank can be a mayor of London but can’t head the LDA (Lahore Development Authority).
Private companies, functioning in a vibrant competitive environment, can provide public services more efficiently. In my cities, nearly all services, from internet to water, are provided by the private companies. I buy water from the Zam-Zam company. Their delivery boys are always on time. Its helpline is 24/7 online. It’s open for inspection for ordinary citizens: I recently paid a visit to its branch; all hygienic standards were being followed, workers were equipped with all necessary skills, etc.
I buy internet from a private company, Wateen. It’s operated by professionals and experts. Recently I had been facing problems with my internet speed. I called at noon. By the evening, all of my objections had been solved, and feedback was taken. There’s a reason for this standard of efficiency: incentives. Humans work for incentives. In my city, there is more than one internet provider; people have an option to switch. Staff is judged on performance. There are key performance indicators (KPIs) in place. Anyone can be fired in case of malfunctioning.
Come out of ideological confusion and understand the simple logic: I have money, and I buy services, which they provide. There are choices and competition, so companies maintain standards. There’s no lifetime employment: entry and exit are facilitated. Any staff member can be fired in case of malfunctioning, or a person can switch if he has found better payment terms. While in the government departments, an employee is hired for a lifetime. There are negligible incentives for them to work hard or provide services or, most importantly, care about the feedback.
To conclude, trust the markets. Let people work. We are in blind love of the government. Despite knowing that the government has failed in service delivery, from providing drinking water to punishing air polluters. There are footprints of government everywhere. Keep the government’s range short: bureaucratic step-up is a major reason for our higher cost of doing business, eroding public trust, and poor public service delivery.
The Writer is the Researcher at the Republic Policy
