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Thursday March 28, 2024

Road to economic independence is paved with tough reforms

By Mansoor Ahmad
August 15, 2018

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LAHORE: While negotiating monetary assistance from friendly countries the new government should also pledge itself to determinedly generate resources from within the country so that the vicious cycle of indebtedness that seems to go on for eternity could be broken once and for all to achieve true economic independence.

As a first step the new government should evaluate the performance of all regulatory institutions and bring changes through law, relieving them of all kinds of political pressures.

Institutional weaknesses are the main hurdle in transparent regulations of economic processes. The new government will have to take some hard decisions to lay the foundation of sustained growth in the country.

It would not be an easy task because the decisions would have to be implemented through entrenched bureaucracy that has always resisted reforms.

The rulers would have to evaluate whether bureaucracy could be reformed without any surgery. This is possible if they take exemplary actions on disobedience, violation of rules or seemingly unfair decisions in the first six weeks of their tenure.

The actions taken should also be fair and transparent. Taming bureaucracy is not a difficult job provided the rulers do not use it for political purposes. It is universally believed that only 10 percent of the bureaucrats are dead honest, while an equal percentage of them are corrupt to the core. The remaining 80 percent simply go with the flow.

If the 10 percent corrupt ones are on top, the remaining 80 percent would follow the suit. On the other hand, if the 10 percent of the most honest officers is in the power corridors then the 80 percent is likely to emulate them.

It is literally impossible to reform 10 percent of the bureaucrats that are corrupt but the 80 percent swaying between corruption and honesty by making them to follow the rule-based fair standard operating procedures and depriving them of all discretionary powers.

The new ruling party would have to see the pattern of postings and transfers of the top bureaucrats in the last 25 years. They are most likely to find out different regimes including Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and military rulers had their own sets of favourite bureaucrats, who were moved to lucrative positions during their different tenures.

Then there will be some bureaucrats, who always remained on top during the reigns of all governments --because they toed the lines of the incumbents regardless of which party was in power.

They will also find some bureaucrats, who briefly got some important posts but were then made ‘officers on special duty’ (OSD) for saying no’ to the illegal orders.

Of course they will also find some bureaucrats, who were made OSDs during the period of PPP or PML-N as they were supposed to have soft corner for either of the parties.

The senior bureaucrats, who remained OSDs for most of their life and were never courted by the previous ruling elites, should be the focus of the new government.

They should be assigned important posts and given the confidence that there will be no political interference in performance of their duties. They most probably are from the 10 percent dead-honest category.

For the time being those, who enjoyed privilege during periods of specific political parties should be made OSDs.

This will create shortage of top bureaucrats. The juniors should fill the posts temporarily till the scrutiny of the OSDs is not complete. The scrutiny would reveal as to how much they benefited their patron parties and how much they gained from them.

Amongst them we will find that the rule of 10:80:10 applies. Those found immensely corrupt should be shown the door and rest gradually re-inducted with clear warning that any deviation from fair and transparent rule based decisions will result in severe action against them.

The actions should be loud and clear otherwise it would be disastrous for the country and economy. We have seen in the past that whenever any head of the department, minister or government, tried to curb corruption the rate of graft went up.

The bribe-taker cites the strong vigilance of government that has increased the risk of approving illegal documents has pushed the rate of bribe up. It should be ensured that corruption is routed out with the assistance of technology.

Another aspect that should be addressed for better governance is to ban the postings of bureaucrats on deputation or otherwise in any public sector company or institution where the tenure of the job is protected by constitution as in all regulatory bodies. These posts should be filled on merit through a transparent and fair selection process. These slots should never be left to be filled on the discretion of any individual, be it the prime minister or the chief ministers.

If seriously implemented, these measures would generate resources indigenously and lower the cost of development on top of strengthening the institutions reforming bureaucracy.