Civil servants or political slaves?
 

To obtain conditions conducive to good governance the government of the day, or for that matter any government, has to have evolved policies and plans that are realistic in terms of their relevance to the ground realties and viability in terms of their financial costs and matching infrastructure for implementation.

The busy-bee optics and cosmetics may work for a while but would more often result in failed dreams of the expected beneficiaries - as seems to be presently the case with legislatures churning out lots of goodies which never step onto the hard ground.

The cause for the failure is too obvious.

On our plate there is no dearth of relevant law, rosy policies and brave declarations, but why we don't see these morphing into the good of the people is because of the rampant failure in their implementation.

How pathetic is the reality of the situation as it obtains in today's Pakistan let us see how things exist on the ground and where are the fault lines.

The evidence is as fresh as the events of the last fortnight or so.

During a by-election in Tando Mohammad Khan quite a senior police officer stood helpless and did nothing to save the polling staff from highhandedness of a powerful, feudal candidate.

But for the prompt media converge that immensely disgusting drama would have been a normal, usual incident which was not the first nor is going to be last in the foreseeable future.

The Sargodha incident where an elderly school master was subjected to the full-blown might of a feudal and what happened to the police officer who had the 'audacity' to take notice of that crime is a story aptly presenting the saga of our bureaucracy increasingly acquiring the position of slaves of politicians.

How rampant and strongly-entrenched is the personal interest of the ruling elite in using civil servants as 'slaves' a piece of information made public before a Supreme Court bench in Lahore Tuesday is a stunning disclosure.

Of the 72 vice chancellors in the public sector universities, 34 have been reappointed after retirement.

Is our teaching community so much in short supply to provide academics of quality and experience that half of the universities had to have these retirees reappointed? We need to diagnose this pandemic in all its stages - from inception to formulation of policies and plans to their implementation.

And how is it that even those that are realistic and can be implemented fail to make the difference that is expected.

Some of these plans are stillborn and the only objective in their announcement is optics for projection and image.

For instance, during this lame-duck year Prime Minister Gilani has laid foundation stones of over a dozen mega projects - quite a few of which lack practicability and financial resources.

Then there is the issue of implementation, where failure is colossal, not only because quite a few plans are not viable, it is also because the civil servants tasked to implement them have been rendered helpless.

Ironically and tragically, the public representatives who are put in government by the people take that public mandate as a licence to rule the country as medieval times victors would over the vanquished.

In today's Pakistan, a law-abiding civil servant carries the stigma of unacceptability for any position other than an office where he sits as a dysfunctional colon in the larger bureaucratic machinery.

Those who refuse to bend the rules to suit the whims and wishes of their political masters are refused decent postings or banished to forbidding places of duty or relegated and in some cases subordinated to favourites retained by extension or reappointment.

Nepotism, favouritism and corruption in recruitment are rampant.

Resultantly, there is this appalling incidence of violence, lawlessness and official inefficiency.

Of course what is now be in the form of a failed bureaucracy is not a recent development.

But the degree it has now acquired is frightening and if not checked would land Pakistan somewhere near the top of failed states.

Immediate countermeasures are needed to be put in place, both by reasserting the existing rules and regulations to ensure security of their jobs, their authority to make decisions in line with rules and duties and keeping them safe from the political influences that so often take the form of their humiliation, wilful transfers and promotions/demotions as 'reward' for slavish obedience of their political masters.

The Supreme Court has ordered reversal of all shoulder-promotions and the hope of redemption from the pandemic is rekindled.

Certainly it would help depoliticizing the police force which is one dire need of the day.

But much more remains to be done.

[url]http://www.brecorder.com/editorials/0/1166800:civil-servants-or-political-slaves/?date=2012-03-19[/url]