As soon as he took over, Prime Minister Imran Khan made clear his intention to reform the civil service to improve governance. To this end, he put together a team of experts that has introduced certain measures.

Governance is a phenomenon through which a society regulates itself to achieve peace and prosperity for its citizens. This function is carried out through the bureaucracy, of which civil service is an important part.

The civil service in Pakistan derives its origin from the erstwhile Indian Civil Service. At the time of independence, the Indian Civil Service comprised just 5,000 civil servants who maintained order and led the subcontinent’s development. They were men of excellent education and integrity, recruited through a system of competitive examination.

The civil service in Pakistan inherited this set of men and later women of great learning and training. They held the government’s reins from 1947 till the martial law of 1958 despite an existential threat and political turmoil. During this period, Pakistan made tremendous progress, with the civil service providing the necessary continuity and stability.

Throughout the world, civil servants have always played a key role in policy formulation and implementation. Good public policy is the backbone of governance in any political system. The policies designed by the civil servants enabled the country to move in the right direction and achieve significant progress. In the process, however, they had attained much power and importance. This concentration of powers was at the expense of the legislature which was weakened by protracted infighting. The civil servants were rightly accused of being stiff-necked, aloof and arrogant. Yet none would accuse them of corruption, lack of integrity or incompetence.

Every government since 1947 has tried to introduce reforms aimed at improving the civil service, starting with the Pay and Services Commission Report of 1949 and including the Administrative Reforms Committee Report of 1973. In between, there were four attempts to re-organise the government. However, Administrative Reforms of 1973 were the most damaging.

During his political campaigns, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had made his intentions very clear. His government would cut the powers of the civil service, especially the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP). He started by sacking 1,300 civil servants on charges of corruption. The reforms abolished the Services and introduced in their place Occupational Groups (the CSP became the DMG (District Management Group)). Perhaps the biggest blow was the removal of constitutional guarantees for civil servants. These guarantees had protected them from dismissal from service, enabling them to be impartial and immune to pressure.

While the reforms helped create a more cohesive government service by introducing a standard training programme and unified pay structure, they also set into motion the politicisation of Pakistan’s civil service. Before this, the scope for political interference had been limited as the CSP elite was in direct control of postings and promotions of its members. This control extended beyond the CSP cadre to other services since the CSP controlled 60 per cent of the slots in the federal and provincial governments, including all the essential ministries and departments. This enabled them to work under institutional autonomy. Bhutto abolished the reservation of posts for the CSP and introduced the lateral entry system at senior government positions. By reducing this institutional control of the bureaucracy, Bhutto wanted to increase the elected representatives’ share in the power structure.

The 1973 reforms made the civil service subservient to the political authorities. It was no longer possible to get good postings or promotions without political support. The politicisation of the services had set in.

During the period of General Zia ul Haq, there was closer coordination between the military and the civil servants. However, Zia neither restored the constitutional protection to the civil servants nor took any other step to make the bureaucracy more independent. This nexus between the civil and military bureaucracy resulted in an enhanced role for the military, which was sealed by the introducing reservation of 10 per cent quota for military officers in the civil services. Military officers had always been inducted into the civil services, but their induction was now institutionalised.

Successor governments further damaged civil service by completely ignoring merit and seniority in making appointments and promotions. Nawaz Sharif was thus rightly accused of personalising the civil service.

General Musharraf completed the rout in 2001. While his Devolution Plan played a positive role in increasing citizens’ participation at the grassroots level, it dealt a decisive blow to the DMG by abolishing the magistracy and deputy commissioners and commissioners’ posts. Magistracy had been the backbone of governance at the grassroots level. The magistrates had maintained law and order, ensured price control and performed many functions under the local and special laws. No alternative arrangements were put in place. This was done in the name of separation of Judiciary from the Executive although that process had been completed a few years earlier under the landmark judgment of Justice Naseem Hassan Shah. Musharraf vastly increased the military’s role by appointing military officers to senior civilian positions; also shared by non-DMG officers, further diminishing this Group’s role. During this period, many DMG officers left the service or took long leaves to join the private sector. This exodus had to be stopped by the government.

Over the decades, the power struggle between the politicians, the military, and the civil service has resulted in a complete loss of authority. The Judiciary’s ascendancy through Justice Iftikhar Chaudhury’s activism relegated the civil service/bureaucracy to the lowest level in Pakistan’s system of governance. Senior civil servants would now spend more time in courts than in their offices.

The civil servants thus lost all initiative and looked towards other pillars of the state for legitimacy and guidance. A resurgent National Accountability Bureau further compounded the situation.

The bureaucracy stopped working, and governance machinery came to a standstill. The most important players in the governance chain had been made to lose faith in the system and the system had lost faith in them.

Governance has two more important players, Judiciary and the Legislature. All three combine to make or break the system — the three pillars of the state work in tandem. The result of integrated working is good or bad governance.

So where do we go from here? The civil service in Pakistan has been made to lose faith, and the will to run the government. In the name of reforms successive governments have been nibbling at the powers of the bureaucracy to make them subservient to their will; forgetting that the bureaucracy functions under the laws, rules and regulations passed by them.

Governance was at its best when the bureaucracy functioned most independently. So we have to give it back its independence. This requires political will and the support of all players in the power structure. We should empower the bureaucracy by minimising political influence and interference in their functioning, while at the same time punishing any deviation.

The government’s recent steps towards designing a better rotation policy for officers posted in the provinces, rationalisation of promotions, and weeding out the deadwood, though welcome, would only affect the services’ inner working. They will fall short of better service delivery to the people.

However, we must appreciate the realisation by this government of the need to improve governance, which perhaps is the first step towards identifying the problems.

The writer is a former secretary of the Establishment and Information Divisions