Pakistan has been facing many challenges for the past few decades. Governments and their advisers have been working on ad-hoc basis and taking reactionary measures without making a substantial effort to improve the quality of governance in the country. The lack of thinking capability in our state apparatus is a serious issue that has affected every aspect of life and governance in the country.

Before delving into the impact of this weakness, it is important to first understand reasons for this lack of thinking capability at state level. Many policymakers think that they know everything. Even people who are well-educated and have served at various public positions are frequently found saying things like, “Pakistan has very good laws and policies, but it lacks implementation.” Such misconceptions have injected over-confidence in politicians and bureaucrats who behave as if they have answers to everything.

Meanwhile, modern societies are facing complex challenges and require dynamic thinking and action. A fixed mindset, particularly one filled with misconceptions, blocks an urge to learn and experiment with new ideas.

Whenever some marginal effort is made by a state organ to work on some critical issues, the preference is often given to foreign and imported consultants. Instead of developing local capacity in universities and public-sector research organisations, governments have been trying to import or borrow wisdom from abroad through foreign experts and local task forces.

While there is no harm in getting advice from foreign experts and engaging with local veterans, the problem lies with lack of absorptive capacity or in-house thinking capacity. These prevent government functionaries from making sense of the advice they get.

Pakistan government’s repeated efforts — from inviting the Harvard Advisory Group of the 1960s to the present-day hybrid of imported academic-cum-consultants — have not yielded much for the country and its people.

Markus Daechsel’s book, Islamabad and the Politics of International Development in Pakistan,described how a Greek consultant developed inroads in the government to get urban infrastructure projects and influenced the urban development process.

Political parties in Pakistan rely on volunteers and retired officers for any thinking support they require. They have not established permanent think-tanks in their parties to think about key policy issues.

The state loses money due to a lack of understanding of the underlying factors and poor design of projects but does not spend money on research, especially on social sciences. This is a serious issue. How can a country outsource thinking and research on social and economic issues to international players?

This is the space that our state has emptied to be taken over by non-state actors. Due to lack of any funding for economic and other social sciences, most academics look for international grants for research. Resultantly, the research is often aligned with the objectives of grant provider, instead of the country’s needs. Such actors often build alliances with some public sector pockets to give an impression that research is aligned with local needs. The impression is often far from reality.

While there is no harm in getting advice from foreign experts and engaging with local veterans, the problem lies with a lack of absorptive capacity or in-house thinking capacity. Theseprevent government functionaries from make sense of good advice.

Pakistani academics work in silos and resist inter-disciplinary dialogue to protect their turfs and monopolies. The educational institutions, at all levels, do not encourage questions, critical thinking and love for reading. This has resulted in an overall lack of demand for thinking in the society.

Over-regulation and centralisation of governance of universities have also contributed to their inability to provide support to society and the government in thinking and decision-making.

Several steps and measures are needed to develop thinking capability in our state machinery and apparatus. However, the starting point should be to inspire public servants to explore knowledge in the areas of state capacity, public policy, state-market interactions, urban management, citizen-centred governance and foresight.

This requires a cultural shift and may not result from a few notifications. Training systems for public servants need to focus on this capability. Directly or indirectly, government spends a lot of money on the training of public sector officers, but it remains unable to develop even the love for reading among public officials.

Discussions on corruption and other malpractices happen frequently in media and policy circles, but this aspect remains ignored. From training to daily working of the government,it is pertinent to push for development of a reading habit among state functionaries.

Pakistan needs to establish a social science research fund like National Science Foundation of the USA. However, the fund should not be converted into an organisation that only employs researchers. The idea should be to finance researchers from Pakistani universities.

The Higher Education Commission has failed to undertake this role due to its focus on regulatory and procedural issues. There is a need to establish such a fund under the Prime Minister’s Office.It should have a well-reputed board.

If an international agency wants to finance research in Pakistan, it should provide money to this fund. This will produce a new breed of social science researchers who not only work closely with the government but are also financed by the government. Moreover, every ministry should spend 5 percent of its budget on research and analysis.

Ministries often create ad-hoc units for this purpose. Instead, they should embed such research and analysis within their mainstream functioning. Parliament should have its own research fund that should be awarded to researchers working on legislature and accountability aspects of governance.

Lastly, the state should also pay attention to big questions that Pakistan is facing: How to reduce dependence on imported fuel? How to develop cities as engines of growth and prosperity? How to provide equitable service delivery in the areas of education, health and drinking water? How to create a robust coordination among different tiers of the government? How to reduce debt burden of the country?

It is hard to find any agency in the government working on inter-disciplinary issues and big questions of our time. Every ministry and organisation is mainly focused on its narrow mandate and protecting its turf.

We need to create thinking capability to put the country on the path to prosperity and dignity. A mere realisation can lead us to developing a road map based on the areas mentioned in the article.

The writer is a teacher, entrepreneur, and economic/urban policy professional having education and interest in urban governance, entrepreneurship and economics. He tweets @navift