Give provinces what is outstanding

The transfer of 19 more departments from Federal control to the provinces under the 18th Amendment, reportedly proposed by the Task Force on Institutional Reforms, should have taken place long time back. This was a constitutional dictate, warranting unquestioned compliance. But given the mindset shaped by a 'strong Centre', particularly during the military regimes, that was not done, or if done it was redone soon after. So, the devolution of governance under the said amendment remains a lingering issue - so much so that even the constitutionally-mandated third tier of governance, the local bodies, has yet to receive respectable baptism. Take the case of the educational institutions in the Federal Capital - they have yet to locate their authorised supervisor, mainly because of reluctance on the part of the federal education ministry to hand over their control to the rightful Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration. Resultantly, the performance of these institutions falls far short of the expectations of residents of the Capital, where private schools, some of them charging high fees, have mushroomed. If the real potential of the Saindak mines remains unexploited that is also essentially because of the center-province conflict of interest. The said task force has recommended its transfer to the Balochistan government. Under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, 17 ministries were devolved to provinces, but some key ministries were re-established in 2011 and onwards, including health, education, climate change, human rights, food, agriculture and population. But in the absence of clear understanding as to who should run some of their departments a kind of inertia besets their performance, earning the government public blame of dragging feet over issues that need urgent resolution.
The proposal for transfer of 19 departments to provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan and ICT comes from one of three task forces created by the present government to find ways to reform bureaucracy and make the work of government institutions more efficient. Interestingly, the concerned task force is headed by Dr Ishrat Husain, a former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan and renowned financial wizard having penetrating insights into how to govern the "Ungovernable". According to him, Pakistan is characterized since Independence as a highly centralized unitary state rather than a truly federal form of government. Was the 18th Amendment an honest attempt at making Pakistan a truly federal state or was it the end result of politicking? These questions have no easy answers. But what we have in hand today is a moth-eaten transfer of powers to the federating units. Dr Husain says: "Some of the federal ministries dealing with these subjects have re-emerged in different forms such as the ministry of higher education and training, ministry of food security and research and the ministry of national health services regulation and coordination... There is no logic for full-fledged ministries for these subjects, and the ministry of inter-provincial coordination should have been strengthened with expertise in these areas to work as the secretariat of the council of common interests". Dr Husain is not a politician, much less a person who would not call a spade a spade. His recommendations do tend to play in the hands of those who accuse the PTI government of scheming to defeat the very raison d'etre of the 18th Amendment. Be it so. The fact however is that he was asked to find out why there is so much poor governance and bureaucratic inefficiency, and his answer was simple and straight - it's because of divided loyalty stemming from retention of offices and departments by the federal government which under the 18th Amendment should have gone to the provinces. Given the federalists' reported open denial but hidden intention to rewrite some parts of this sacred pro-provincial autonomy document the said task force's recommendation may not receive a positive response of concerned high offices in the Capital. But that in no way should be concluded that what the task force recommended is not in the larger national interest and that reluctance to comply with them would negatively impact the national security.