Pakistan’s reforms deficit

Pakistan’s reforms deficit

PAKISTAN has never suffered from a shortage of civil service reform proposals. It has suffered from a shortage of reforms that survive implementation. Since independence, successive governments, commissions and committees have attempted to restructure the administrative machinery inherited from the colonial state. Yet familiar complaints persist: excessive generalism, weak accountability, politicisation, distorted incentives, slow decision-making and a bureaucracy often better equipped to process files than solve complex problems. The latest reform package is significant not because Pakistan has rediscovered civil service reform, but because it attempts to address several structural weaknesses simultaneously. It proposes 11 specialised professional cadres, competency-based recruitment, performance-linked remuneration, restructuring of training and human-resource management, and a National Executive Service (NES) under which BS-20 and above positions could be opened to serving officials, academics and private-sector professionals. Pakistan inherited the powerful, generalist Civil Service of Pakistan from the colonial administrative tradition. The most dramatic restructuring came under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1973, when the CSP structure was abolished and occupational groups reorganised. But restructuring did not democratise opportunity within government. The devolution reforms introduced under Gen Pervez Musharraf in 2001 represented another major intervention, transferring substantial authority towards elected local governments and altering traditional district administration. But institutional discontinuity and subsequent political changes prevented the system from developing into a durable architecture of local governance. Reform is often treated as an event rather than a sustained process. This history reveals Pakistan’s recurring problem: reform is often treated as an event rather than a sustained process. The strongest feature of the present package is its recognition that a modern state cannot be managed through transferable generalists. Professional cadres in fields including IT and telecom, energy, climate, engineering, health, education, law, agriculture and science address a genuine administrative weakness. Opening senior positions to competition could be still more consequential. It could bring specialists into government who would otherwise never enter conventional public service and allow capable career officers to compete beyond rigid cadre boundaries. But lateral entry carries an equally obvious risk: without credible safeguards, it can become lateral patronage. International experience offers principles rather than readymade templates. Pakistan should borrow principles, not blindly transplant institutions. Performance-linked remuneration illustrates the challenge. Annual performance agreements for ministries, flowing down to individual officers, could improve accountability. But who determines whether a secretary has performed well? If targets are vague or assessments depend excessively upon political superiors, financial incentives could rew­ard proximity to power rather than performance. The ultimate measurement must therefore be governance. Does a business licence take days instead of months? Are teachers and doctors present? Are development projects completed on time? Can citizens obtain public services without intermediaries? Can civil servants make lawful professional decisions without seeking political protection? Significantly, the Police Service and Foreign Service would remain outside the proposed NES. There are sound reasons for treating them as specialised career services requiring institutional continuity, accumulated professional experience and service-specific training. Their exclusion from the NES, however, need not mean exclusion from reform. For the police, Pakistan does not need to start from scratch. In May 2018, then chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar initiated a Police Reforms Committee bringing together nine retired and seven serving Inspectors General of Police. After extensive deliberations, it produced the two-volume Police Reforms: Way Forward, launched in Jan 2019. Building upon the Police Order 2002 and subsequent experience, the exercise addressed some of the most persistent weaknesses of policing: accountability, quality and independence of investigation, complaint redressal, urban policing, alternative dispute resolution, counterterrorism and the legal framework governing the police. It proposed a model police law while recognising the constitutional and administrative realities of Pakistan’s federal system. Yet the principal structural problems identified by the committee remain largely unresolved. Its convener, former IGP Afzal Ali Shigri, observed as recently as Feb 2026 that fragmented legal frameworks, weaknesses in investigation and uneven accountability mechanisms continue to impede reform. The 2019 police reform report thus stands as a telling case study of Pakistan’s persistent gap between designing reform and implementing it. The exclusion of the Police Service from the NES presents an opportunity rather than necessarily a deficiency. Instead of forcing policing into an administrative model designed for civilian mi­­nistries, the government can revive Police Reforms: Way Forward, update it and implement its still-relevant recommendations. The Foreign Service can similarly retain its distinctive professional structure while pursuing the broader reform principles of merit, specialisation, transparent advancement and measurable performance. The government proposes an ambitious implementation timetable for the new civil-service package. Speed can create momentum, but changing regulations is easier than changing administrative culture. No examination reform can compensate for arbitrary postings. No specialised cadre can flourish if expertise is subordinated to connections. No performance contract creates accountability if influence protects poor performance. And no reform report, however professionally drafted, improves governance while it remains on a shelf. Pakistan has spent decades reforming bureaucracy on paper. The real reform is to build institutions where competence matters more than cadre, performance more than seniority, expertise more than connections and public service more than institutional privilege. The writer is a former Inspector General of Police and DG FIA. Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2026