Tariq Mahmood Awan
It begins like every other dream in this country, the dream of becoming a civil servant. In every classroom, in every university corridor, in every drawing room conversation, the phrase CSS karna hai echoes like a national ambition. Parents see it as pride, society sees it as status, and young people see it as a ticket to social and financial prestige. But behind this obsession lies a truth that few dare to tell, civil services in Pakistan are no longer a symbol of public service; they are a reflection of a system that is slowly eating its own people, to say the least.
SP Adil Akbar’s alleged suicide in Islam Abad is not an isolated tragedy but rather a mirror. It reflects what happens when idealism collides with reality, when conscience meets coercion, and when humanity suffocates inside the walls of bureaucracy. The police service, once seen as a badge of honour, has turned into one of the most psychologically punishing institutions in the country, as several police collegues argue with me. But let’s be honest, this isn’t just about the police. It’s about the culture that defines Pakistan’s entire civil service, now.
Thousands of young men and women prepare for years to join it. They believe it will bring them power, prestige, and purpose. They imagine themselves as change-makers, as upright officers standing for justice. And yes, there are many who still hold those values, who wake up every morning believing they can make a difference. But increasingly, the system doesn’t reward them. It rewards compliance, not courage. It rewards convenience, not conviction.
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In this system, the honest civil servants struggle , the ambitious survive. The sensitive are suffocated, the insensitive thrive. It’s a cruel irony: the more human you are, the more unfit you become for service. Those who question orders, who stand by the law, who refuse to compromise are labelled “difficult.” They are sidelined, humiliated, and often destroyed from within. Meanwhile, those who bow, bend, and barter principles for power are rewarded with positions, praise, perks and protocol.
Civil service today is no longer about governance, it’s about survival. The game is clear: secure a lucrative posting, align with the right political camp, stay silent when you should speak, and smile when you should resist. If you can do that, you’ll rise.
The tragedy is that so many civil servants start with good intentions. But the environment, the toxic mix of politics, pressure, and pretence — changes them. They stop seeing people as citizens and start seeing them as files. They stop asking questions and start managing optics. They stop serving, and start surviving. Over time, even the honest ones begin to feel useless, trapped between moral despair and institutional indifference. I am also a victim of this system. Over the past three years, I have been an OSD for more than 26 months and I am still going strong as an OSD, quite “successfully,” as they call it. However, this and other acute descrimination do not put me into any kind of depression or stress.
I have seen officers working sixteen hours a day, skipping meals, ignoring families, chasing files that go nowhere. They call it duty. I call it a slow death. Civil servants today are not machines, yet they are treated as such — overworked, undervalued, and emotionally drained. There is no mental health support, no mentoring, no space to be human. You either keep running, or you fall apart. And when one falls, like Adil Akbar did, the system merely shrugs and moves on.
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But not every story is tragic. There are still men and women in the service who quietly fight the rot, who refuse to play dirty, who believe that honesty still counts. They don’t make headlines, but they keep the system from collapsing entirely. They are the real heroes, often forgotten, often frustrated, but never faithless. Their struggle is not against individuals; it’s against a culture that punishes integrity and glorifies manipulation. One thing is very important, it is a colonial bureacuracy, formed and promoted for expolitation not service.
The truth is, bureaucracy in Pakistan has lost its soul, if it had any. It has become a theatre where scripts are written elsewhere and actors perform without choice. And yet, within this performance, there are a few who still dare to improvise, to bring humanity back to service, even when the system rejects them. Even, I feel fear to talk about the growing inhuman attitudes of civil servants for the general public. So, it is complete frustration now, from committing suicide to killing scores of people. Where has normalcy gone?
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Civil servants need to remember: no post, no title, no office is worth your peace of mind. You are not defined by your chair, but by your conscience. If the system asks you to lose your humanity to keep your career, then it is not worth keeping. It’s better to walk away with dignity than stay chained in despair. However, it is a contentious issue within the civil service. I have often observed that officers who are part of the system tend to be happier, while those who are not are generally unhappier. Therefore, sensitive civil servants are at greater risk. It is quite a funny contradiction.
Pakistan needs reform, yes — but more than that, it needs compassion, care and humanity. The civil service must rediscover its purpose: to serve, not to survive. We must build an environment where good officers feel protected, not punished; where leadership means mentorship, not manipulation; and where public service once again becomes an act of pride, not pain.
Because when a civil servant dies by his own hand, it is not just a personal tragedy, it is an institutional failure. The system didn’t just lose an officer; it lost a human being it was supposed to protect. And unless we learn from this, there will be more Adil Akbars, more silent cries, and more lives lost behind polished desks and official seals.
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Civil services should have been a sanctuary for the nation’s best minds, not a battlefield where morality bleeds and empathy dies. The choice now is simple: either rebuild the system on humanity, or keep watching it destroy the very humans it was meant to honour. Lastly, I will love to advise the young people, civil service is not the end of life. Do not glorify it.
