Last Wednesday newspapers juxtaposed two stories. In one the PM met the Army Chief to discuss 'security matters'. In the other, the PM met the exchange companies to read them the riot act. The former is unsurprising; the latter mind-boggling.
There was another interesting contrast. The first one was a one-on-one. There was no mention of the Defense and Foreign Ministers being there to assist the PM, as they should have, if the discussions were about matters emanating from the heightened tensions to our West.
If the meeting was about internal security matters it would be reasonable to expect the Interior Minister to be there as well. He wasn't.
When you have such well publicized one-on-one meetings people get a different message: was it about security or 'politics'?
The second one had everyone present, including the Governor SBP. This too conveyed the wrong message. If the PM has to personally intervene in something that ordinarily a midlevel SBP functionary handles quite effectively would the market be wrong to read it as a sign of panic?
It also puts to question government's oft-repeated stance that Exchange Rate is SBP's exclusive domain. Thus, was SBP being assertive when for the next two days it sat on the sidelines, letting the rupee plummet? Or, did the Advisor Finance 'forget' to tell the PM that a large devaluation was planned for the next day?
The point is not about security and exchange rate, weighty as these issues are. The point is about the PM having frequent exclusive meetings with the Army Chief. The point is about the PM usurping the authority of functionaries.
It is a sure sign of things not working when the top management comes into the front office.
Management is about empowerment - giving the functional level sufficient authority to do its job, having its back, and holding it accountable. Delegation is not abdication. You keep a close watch on how delegated authority is being exercised. The risk of misuse is mitigated through better control systems, not spiraling authority upwards.
The government swings from one extreme to the other. In certain cases it delegates, often excessively, and then forgets about it, letting the functionary make hay or a mess of it, or both. In other cases it centralizes powers at the top.
Concentration of power is antithetical to good governance. It is fraught with the risk of rule of man weakening rule of law. In top-down management command substitutes leadership and 'workarounds' dominate rules, as happened with the appointment of Chairman FBR.
The widely acclaimed first order in office of the pro bono Chairman is illustrative of how we weaken, perhaps unwittingly, the functional levels. By publicly restraining Tax Officers from freezing accounts without his prior approval the Chairman conveyed a message of lack of trust in them.
Arguably, you are also denigrating the law through executive instructions, especially when you require the authority to give '24 hour notice' before freezing the account. Does the law provide for this 'escape clause'?
If the issue was one of alleged harassment the answer surely is in installing effective control mechanisms, instead of transferring discretion from the RTO to the Chairman.
Now the Chairman is in the front office.
A permanent civil service is pivotal to governance. You have a responsible and responsive bureaucracy and you can expect reasonable standards of governance. You have a demoralized bureaucracy, as we currently do, and you can kiss good-bye to good governance, as we have done.
Admittedly, bureaucracy has done little to help its cause. As a class it perhaps deserves the derision that it attracts. But the rulers too, whether in khaki or mufti, spared no effort to reduce the bureaucracy to impotence. In the process civil service competence, neutrality and probity took a hit.
The path to impotence had several markers but a constant nibbling away at the authority delegated to functional levels stands out. Authority, defying the laws of gravity, kept going up and up, until it gave new meaning to Peter Principle: not the person but the job rose to its level of incompetence.
The PM having to browbeat the Exchange Companies captures it all.
Graeber's Bullshit Jobs is an absorbing read. He could well have been speaking of Pakistan's civil services when he identifies the flunkies, box tickers, and task masters - people getting paid to do things that are 'pointless, unnecessary or pernicious'.
Bereft of authority - and consequentially responsibility - our civil servants keep penning copious notes in Victorian English to the annoyance of people upstairs. When a forest department official did his math on planting a billion trees the hierarchy simply dropped a couple of zeros.
Babus sure use a lot of paper; so many trees laid waste.
But our government Bullshit Jobs give the incumbents sufficient spare time to whine, spreading frustration far and wide that they collectively take out on the public. It also gives them time to scheme and plot - and come up with ingenious ways to supplement the salary that the government pretends to pay for the job they pretend to do.
We talk, with good reason, of devolving power to local governments. But what good would this devolution be if the transferred powers are centralized in the District Nazim? The task force on civil service reform focuses almost entirely on tenures and career paths; nary a thought on restoring authority to functional levels.
In our war on corruption we have conveniently overlooked the fountain head of corruption: concentration of power at the top. Concentration diffuses checks and balances. Corruption at lower levels can be reduced through a rigorous inspection system, but who will check the head if he misuses authority? It is in the nature of the beast for the alpha male to claim the right to the best and the choicest.
'You do your job and I will do mine' is an Army cliché to be emulated by the civilians. Every level should have clearly delineated authority limits and responsibility thresholds. Ministers and Secretaries should not usurp the authority of those they supervise. They should get the best out of the team, and not reduce them to coprolite (technical name for fossilized feces).
The image of a government is built by its lowest functionary. Make sure that police constable is respected.
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