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Old Tuesday, January 28, 2020
iMalikBilal iMalikBilal is offline
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Default Accountability Essential for Development of Pakistan. ESSAY CHECK AND OPINION!

Below is an essay I attempted, please give your valuable feedback. Constructive Criticism appreciated!

Introduction
• Front-Loading Accountability
• Various Aspects of Accountability
1. Political Accountability
2. Social
3. Administrative
4. Economic Accountability
• Review of the Accountability situations in Pakistan
1. Situation in the Past
2. Present Situation
• Accountability being an Essential ingredient in the development of Pakistan
1. Political Development of Pakistan
2. Accountability and Economic Development of Pakistan
3. Administrative Development
4. Social Development
• Obstacles in The Way of Accountability
1. Legislative Hurdles
2. Administrative Hurdles
3. Social hurdles
4. Financial Hurdles
• Recommendations for The Improvement of Accountability Situation in Pakistan
• Conclusion

Accountability is always taken as a negative and punitive word. In actuality, it is defined as the willingness to take responsibility for one’s actions. Accountability is an absolute necessity for an organization to sustain success. In organizations, employees are given specific roles and tasks and at the end of the day, they are answerable to the upper management about any progress they have made. In ethics and governance, it means that the government servants are answerable to the general public for their actions. Government servants must help the general public and the general public has the right to hold them responsible for their actions. Without accountability, all employees in an organization will do as they want to do because they will think there is no one watching them and they can get away with not doing their job. Our intentions for making an officer accountable for their actions shouldn’t be to make them feel bad but for them to correct their mistakes and succeed. Since its independence, Pakistan has gone through a rough phase of democracy with military interfering in the country’s politics. The process of accountability has not been incorporated in the country’s workings and has thus damaged its economic conditions. This has allowed corruption and malpractices in the state organizations to flourish, which in turn have caused a serious blow to the cultural, political, social and economic development of Pakistan. Employees in state organizations have been allowed to work without clear expectations and any accountability process. It has become more of a structural problem in Pakistan. The current government's motto is to eliminate this menace of corruption but it is an uphill task. Accountability is a necessity for Pakistan to uphold our National Interest and to rise in the ranks of the countries of the world.
Accountability helps to eliminate the time and effort people waste on doing unnecessary activities. It helps people focus on the main task and use their time effectively. Front-loading accountability makes people learn what is expected of them. You have to provide clear specifics to the people. It is a two-way process and both the parties should know what their responsibilities are in this process. The next step of this process is to have a high testing standard which will be used to judge the quality of work done. Feedback is a very important process. It helps people recognize their mistakes and to do better next time. Only those organizations will succeed who have a robust accountability process and use feedback to improve gradually. When you front-load accountability, performance increases, resources are better allocated, and teams are strengthened thus improving the overall efficiency of the system.
In a democratic form of government, political representatives are selected by the people. Representatives with more votes win and are chosen to represent the people in a certain area. Since they are chosen by the people, they have to act in the best interests of the general public. The general public has all the right to hold them responsible for whatever they do. The public can either reward the representatives by re-electing them if they do a good job or they can put sanctions on them by not electing them again if they go against the will of the people. Representatives, on the other hand, have to do what is best for society and select good policies to be reelected. As long as the representatives believe that they will be held accountable by the people for whatever they do, they will always work in the best interests of the people.
Social accountability is related to community-based initiatives intended to improve transparency and access to information holding the state accountable. It is a two-way process which requires the interaction of community-based groups with the government. Its effectiveness is highly dependent or how it is initiated and exercised. Indirectly social accountability aims to improve government efficiency and performance. Through social accountability, the citizens are connected to the government and can communicate their needs. It is a means for collaboration between the two entities. Social accountability assumes that the government always has its door open and citizens are willing to meaningfully engage with the government. For it to work effectively, information regarding state practices should be openly available to the public.
Civil servants and government officials are part of a hierarchy. Due to this they always have to report to their superiors who keep a check on their activities and hold them accountable internally. Their behaviour is bounded by internal rules and regulations. Externally there are watchdogs which keep an eye out on corrupt practices and can also use complaints from the public to launch investigations of any malpractices by the concerned individual and hold them accountable for those practices. This makes sure that the individuals do their duties with the utmost care and don’t turn towards corrupt practices because if they do so there is a fear of being caught and fined or jailed. All of this results in better performance and safe practices within the organization.
Since the government is elected by its citizens and civil servants serve these people as well, the people have all the right to question the government about economic policies. Changes in fiscal and monetary policies affect inflation and also the foreign direct investment and the brunt of all of this are bore by the general public. All economic policies and actions taken by the government should be transparent and in the best interest of the people. The level of taxation, government spending and regulation also affects government performance. Ministers of the state are responsible for the government's effectiveness in increasing economic development and to be accountable for the decisions that they take that will affect the whole country.
Pakistan has been drowned in debt because of the corrupt practices of its leaders in the past. Dictatorial rules have put it in even more financial troubles. According to Transparency International, the PPP government from 2008-2013 was the most corrupt democratic government in the history of Pakistan and then the government of PMLN from 2013-2018 followed suit with even more corrupt practices. No standard of accountability was maintained and this country was looted of its wealth and its resources. Policies by these governments reduced Vertical social mobility to nearly zero. NAB was formed in 1999 and was working in the time of these two governments but no high-level arrest was made in the time of these two governments because of their strong political hold on the top bureaucracy of the country. Several reports in those years show how millions of dollars were shifted from Pakistan to bank accounts in other countries.
Since the start of PTI’s government things have started to pick up the pace. The process of accountability has started with a fresh objective of punishing all those who have illegally benefited from the countries resources and who used their powerful positions to benefit themselves and who did not serve the general public as they should have. In nearly 2 years of the new government, NAB has arrested some of the top leaders of the previous governments and has brought millions of rupees of the looted money from these people back to Pakistan. FBR has also been strengthened so that people who avoid giving taxes can also be punished. The constant threat of getting caught has made the government officials work transparently and the wheels of this jammed economy have slowly started to turn and everyone is hoping that good times are just around the corner.
In the past politicians used to say whatever they wanted to get a large vote bank and win elections. They used to tell lies that would please the general public and gain their votes. Promises they made were fake and after being elected none of those promises was fulfilled. This resulted in the stagnation of politics and political development. Now with accountability process that has been launched, not only are these corrupt leaders being caught but the public is now well informed too. They are more politically involved than ever before; they have realized that their voice is the most important in making decisions. And in this fear, the politicians themselves are also trying to reform themselves and getting rid of these malpractices.
The policies that are now being made are better than those made in the last two governments. People being more aware are started to question every little act of the government. Social media is serving as an important tool in mobilizing the masses. Opinions reach people in a matter of seconds and everything is at people’s fingertips. Corruption is becoming less and less rampant and the looted money is coming back to Pakistan. This will surely help the economy stabilize and will have positive impacts soon. This will make sure that a steady stream of money remains in the system and doesn’t go out of it. This will also help with the twin deficits and increase our foreign exchange reserves.
Structural faults in our systems are a result of non-accountability. There is no system of checks and balances. No one to check what the bureaucracy is up to and whether it is doing its work transparently and honestly or not. This has resulted in the delay of a lot of projects which require their approval. Money is spent in doing half of these projects and then they are abandoned. And then due to the time value of money their cost to complete keeps on increasing hence costing the state millions of rupees. With accountability, these things would not happen. The administrative structure would strengthen with better administrative practices resulting in better resource allocation and efficient use of state’s money.
With these new processes, people are becoming more self-aware. They are slowly starting to realize that these people are elected to serve the general masses and the citizens have all the control. They are now starting to question every decision the government makes. The gap between government and the people is starting to shrink with the government and citizens communicating and collaborating for better practices and better governance.
Weak legislation is the first and foremost challenge to accountability. Without laws and legislation, no accountability can be carried out. Since those people have to make laws who will be held accountable in the future, they are reluctant to do that. They are reluctant to make those watchdogs powerful which will eventually lead to them being held responsible for their actions. National Accountability Ordinance was formulated in 1999 but NAB was only used as a source of political victimization at that time. A few days ago, another amendment was passed by the PTI government in hopes of curtailing NAB’s powers because according to them it was meddling with bureaucratic and state affairs. Hence to carry out across the board accountability, NAB should have strong legislation to back its claims.
After the problem of weak legislation comes the problem of its execution. Execution of all laws and legislation is the responsibility of the executive branch of the state. The ministers of this branch are selected from political parties themselves and hence they create hurdles in the implementation of accountability laws and laws in general which might damage them. Because of this, there is a dire need of Watchdogs which are not under the governments’ powers and work away from the government’s circle of influence so that they can make independent decisions and carry out an across the board accountability movement to help recover the looted wealth.
Not enough financial resources are being allocated to independent watchdogs such as NAB. This makes it difficult for them to smoothly carry out their functions. Due to financial restraints, they have to cut expenditures and also staff which makes the whole process of accountability slow. This causes delays in the process which might eventually result in the release of the suspects that were caught by NAB. We need to realize the fact that the more money we put into these organization the efficiently they will work and more money they will bring back. Corruption will also be stopped hence helping the government financially in the long run.
NAB should be made an independent entity away from the circle of influence of the government. Accountability should start from the top and no one should be spared if found guilty. Exemplary punishment should be given to these people and so that they would serve as an example for anyone who wants to do these malpractices. Adequate financial resources should be allocated to NAB for its smooth and effective functioning. People should be made more aware of their social and political rights and they should know that they are the ones who elected these representatives and they have the power to speak up against their malpractices. Legislation should be drafted which gives more power to NAB so that the politicians and other officials stop their malpractices in fear of getting caught and severely punished. Accountability should be made a source of political victimization rather it should work against all who have looted this country of its wealth. The army and judiciary have their processes of accountability and both of them should look inwards to see if there is any corruption going on and punish those found guilty. There should be transparency in the government budget and its spending. This will make sure that these practices if done are easily seen.
People of Pakistan nothing but to see the looted money come back to Pakistan. They want to see the corrupt people getting punished no matter at what position they served. This money can be used in developmental projects in Balochistan and the newly merged FATA. Improving infrastructure should be an utmost priority and this money could be well spent in these war-torn and backward areas. 40pc of Pakistan lies below the poverty line, this money can be used to create more jobs and provide the people of Pakistan with the opportunity of mobbing vertically upward in the class structure.
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