Imtiaz Gul
Economists and development experts agree that COVID-19 is both a crisis and an opportunity. However, inherent structural hurdles can prevent the government from translating the opportunities into real action.
Bureaucracy and the extractive nature of state institutions and the self-serving mindset of those in governance represent the biggest obstacle to restructuring the key arms of the state.
They quote the unceremonious departure of Shabbar Zaidi, Haroon Sharif, Iftikhar Durrani, Amir Kayani inter alia to underline the presence and the unbridled power of the elephant in the room, i.e., District Management Group (DMG) personified by top bureaucrats such as Azam Khan and Arbab Shehzad Maroof Afzal. Is it not an abuse of power that after retiring as a Federal Secretary Cabinet Division, Afzal went on to become a Member Federal Public Service Commission?
Consequently not a single MP-1, 2, 3 position has been occupied because of the mighty nexus between serving and retired DMG bureaucrats.
As evident from a story on the following pages on the state of Pak-Afghan trade and the Afghan transit trade (that peaked to $2.7 billion and has now plummeted to a 600 million dollars), maverick bureaucrats keep springing surprises on their political bosses and subordinates alike. The story sheds ample light on the cold-blooded trickeries that civil and military bureaucrats deploy in the name of national interest. Instead, they mostly end up doing the contrary, i.e., damaging the country’s long-term political and economic interests by emasculating real decision-making.
This in turn also stymies political decision-making, largely through the power of self-serving Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs) and similar regulation.
Unless Prime Minister Imran Khan manages to build a consensus among political groups, power groups, media, and the private sector to wrest real power from the bureaucrats, his ability to reform key governance areas will remain limited.
As of now, most independent observers and experts hardly exude any confidence as far as turning Khan’s reforms promise into reality is concerned.
These reforms may come to transpire if China begins demanding it for smoother and quicker implementation of the 100s of agreements and memoranda of understanding (MoUs) that both countries have meanwhile stockpiled. The prospect of economic growth through structural reform otherwise looks distant and hostage to the whims of the bureaucracy.
