Editorial
Seventy-eight years on, Pakistan still lacks resilient civilian institutions. Governance remains personality-driven, not system-driven; procedures bend to politics, and rules yield to discretion. The result is fragile service delivery that frays under stress and fails to convert public spending into public value.
Both politicians and bureaucracy share responsibility. Patronage has crowded out performance; postings, procurements, and projects too often reward networks rather than outcomes. When incentives favor short-term optics over long-term capacity, institutional memory erodes and citizens pay the price in insecurity, inflation, and chronic under-investment in public goods.
The consequences are visible from irrigation to disaster management. Water distribution remains leaky, inequitable, and weakly regulated; floods and droughts alternate as preventable crises. Disaster institutions stay reactive instead of risk-based and preventive. Early-warning, land-use planning, and resilient infrastructure are treated as afterthoughts—until the next emergency strikes.
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The only sustainable path forward is to build effective civilian institutions from the ground up—beginning with empowered local governments. Proximity breeds accountability; citizens can see, measure, and demand results. Local governments translate national priorities into neighborhood outcomes, if they are given authority, capacity, and predictable finance.
Reform must lock in three guarantees: clear legal mandates that survive political cycles; transparent, formula-based fiscal transfers; and professionalized local cadres recruited on merit. With digital budgeting, open procurement, and public dashboards, citizens can track every rupee from allocation to outcome.
Provincial and federal tiers should coordinate standards, audits, and risk management, while leaving service delivery and maintenance to empowered districts and cities. Performance compacts—measured by water reliability, waste collection, school attendance, and disaster readiness—can replace slogans with scorecards.
Pakistan does not need another overhaul of personalities; it needs institutions that outlast them. Start with strong local governments, and the chain of competence—from canal to classroom to crisis response—will finally hold. Delay only deepens dysfunction; devolution done right can repair the republic.
