EDITORIAL: Former finance minister Miftah Ismail’s idea of creating more provinces by giving each division the status of an administrative unit – to facilitate transfer of real power to the grassroots, of course – is not new.

But it makes more and more sense as time passes and the burden of the faults of politicians falls squarely on the people, who are far removed from the decision-making process in the present system.

There can also be no denying that the 18th Amendment, which transferred power from the centre to the provinces, didn’t really come full circle because it just brushed past the third and most important tier of administration; local governments.

And now that all sorts of ideas, models and administrations have failed to improve the lot of the people or the outlook of the state – quite to the contrary, actually – it makes sense to give people a more direct role in running their affairs.

Empowering the grassroots is at the heart of representative government, after all, and once people on the ground are in control of finances that must be spread between necessities like education, healthcare, etc., it’s best if they decide which sector gets how much of the pie and how to monitor disbursement and utilisation.

Everybody knows that nobody in the political hierarchy gave so much as a serious thought to local government because of the political elite’s obsession with keeping all the money with itself; which is why it was something of a surprise when the PPP (Pakistan People’s Party) government legislated devolution of power to the provinces some years ago.

And it’s a serious indictment of the political lobby that the only time this country saw truly empowered, and financed, local governments was in the time of a military dictator, when General Musharraf ran the show.

Since then all governments, including those that could not stop harping about their unique democratic credentials, have either done everything possible not to hold local body polls or shamelessly clipped almost all powers of local governments just to make sure that the key to the kitty remains at the top of the political food chain.

It’s going to be a difficult idea to implement, no doubt, if it comes to that. There are numerous political and legislative issues that will have to be settled first. But as long as the irritants are purely political in nature while the problems of the people are very real, it makes sense to take this bull by the horns and create a model which revolves around the common people of Pakistan.

Right now they pay extra for everything, especially life’s basic necessities, because the parties and systems that govern the country have no space for them. They certainly didn’t have anything to do with the $100 billion-plus mountain of debt the country is buried under, yet they must pay for it, quite literally, even though most of them have no savings to speak of.

This is not the first smart idea that’s been put on the table since the former finance minister and a few other disgruntled politicians decided to take their grievances and frustrations directly to the people with the ‘Reimagining Pakistan’ theme.

If nothing else, this exercise shows that there is an urgent need to debate our most pressing problems, like why so many children in what is one of the world’s most densely populated countries out of school, why are so many of them born stunted and why can this problem not be solved? Why do we owe so much money to just about all lending institutions and countries out there while almost none of the debt trickled down to the masses?

It’s pretty clear that such questions will not find answers, much less solutions, until the people run their own affairs.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023