Patronage and power

In Pakistan, if you have ever experienced the inconvenience and general discomfort of dealing with government officials (as have I numerous times), then this is something that you, by and large, do not relish at all.

Take the case of getting a passport or CNIC made or a driving licence – something that most of us will have experienced at some point in time. And the experiences may vary – technology may have improved service quality and the time spent in acquiring these basic services – but for many it’s a process that took a lot of time and required repeated visits to the public office.

The delay and red tape a citizen can experience vary according to their level of education, wealth and the connections that he or she has in society in general and among government in particular.

For instance, in the renewal or issuance of passports, many people face what to them is a very arbitrary and citizen-unfriendly rule that requires them to renew passports from the office/area that issued them their previous passports. That this should happen in the 21st century and in a country that likes to claim that it heading towards a digitized and modern economy boggles the mind.

Why can’t someone who got their old passport made in Lahore get it renewed at the passport office in Karachi? Or vice versa? Or why can’t someone who got their CNIC made in one city get it renewed from another? Why must government systems and procedures in place for basic services such as identity cards, birth certificates, passports, etc be so opaque? Why must individual officials who work in these offices have so much discretionary power that they can deny such services to citizens on a flimsy excuse or a whim?

In Pakistan, the system has usually worked along the lines of patronage – rewarding those who have access to powerful people or who are themselves in positions of power and authority. Since the system is perceived as not working on lines of merit but of patronage and whoever has access to power and/or money, citizens who have to use to obtain services provided by the state usually believe that the best way to ensure that is to gain access through a connection or use influence to get what they needed done.

While one can’t really blame an ordinary citizen for doing this, given that they have seen that the system doesn’t cater to those who have neither power nor wealth, such a route that bypasses the normal channel further weakens the system. This is much like people who try and skip the immigration line at airports in Pakistan, using connections in FIA Immigration or the Airport Security Force, or the government in general. They take the turn of those who have followed the rules and regulations and waited in line and for this the citizens are punished and those who skip the line are rewarded. So any rational person would wonder why they should wait in line and be pushed back.

And this is something that happens throughout the system, be it at the immigration line at the airport, or the CNIC or passport renewal line or the one at the driving licence renewal branch. These offices have, however, done well in recent years to minimise and eliminate the agents’ mafia – but to some extent this has been replaced by their own officials bringing in their relatives, and friends, and relatives of relatives to the front of the line that is supposed to serve all citizens. And there is no check to stop this. In Western societies, if anyone tries and breaks the line, the staff serving them immediately tell them to go back and wait like everyone else. That, however, is absent here and staff that are deputed at counters be it in public government offices or even at banks never tell those breaking the line that they will be served only when they wait for their turn just like everyone else.

While I am not a psychologist, I have interacted enough with government officials to understand that many of the senior ones suffer from a highly exaggerated sense of self-worth and importance.

Even a middling Grade 18 civil servant in a government organisation will act as though he’s the chief minister of the province. His guard or driver will carry his bag to the car and from there to his office, while the office peon will clean his table and give him tea (after every 2-3 hours). And all his subordinate staff will have to go to his office for any instructions or to get anything signed, and he being the sahib, will never venture out of his room to mingle with them – and of course, for the general public who may need to see him, he will always be ‘in a meeting’.

This system fosters and places a premium on VIPs, facilitating a VIP culture, which, despite claims to the contrary by those in the previous PTI government, is alive and kicking.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. He tweets/posts @omar_quraishi and can be reached at: omarrquraishi@gmail.com