A Treatise on the Civil Service of Pakistan: The Structural- Functional History (1601–2011)

Qudrat Ullah

author: Ms. Kiran Khur­shid

Writ­ing about sen­si­tive issues and doing seri­ous research work is not the usu­al forte of civ­il ser­vants in Pak­istan. They are most­ly known in the pub­lic for their wan­ton arro­gance, impas­sive­ness and lust for pow­er. How­ev­er, after going through “A Trea­tise on the Civ­il Ser­vice of Pak­istan: The Struc­tur­al- Func­tion­al His­to­ry (1601–2011)” writ­ten by Ms. Kiran Khur­shid- a young DMG offi­cer of 34th Com­mon Train­ing Pro­gram of 2005 — I can now aver that our young entrants to the elite civ­il ser­vice are capa­ble indi­vid­u­als like their colo­nial pre­de­ces­sors who left count­less foot­prints on the sands of his­to­ry with their ded­i­cat­ed hard work and pub­lic ser­vice in the sub-con­ti­nent. This 446 page book, divid­ed in eight chap­ters, is an ana­lyt­i­cal study of the rise of the insti­tu­tion of civ­il ser­vice from the estab­lish­ment of the East India Com­pa­ny in 1601 to 2011, when decades of mis­man­age­ment and insti­tu­tion­al decay have made this vital sym­bol of fed­er­a­tion quite inca­pable of ser­vice deliv­ery and gov­er­nance in Pak­istan.

The book cov­ers a span of more than 4 cen­turies. There are more than 300 pic­tures, career pro­files of emi­nent civ­il ser­vants, 45 tables depict­ing vital sta­tis­tics, 23 flow charts and hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures, 12 maps of dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries, mul­ti­ple charts and his­tograms devel­oped from the orig­i­nal data as well as spe­cial arti­cles in each chap­ter, rel­e­vant to the era, and an indi­ca­tion of the con­tri­bu­tion of the emi­nent civ­il ser­vants, make it worth read­ing. The infor­ma­tion regard­ing admin­is­tra­tive divi­sions and logos of var­i­ous tiers of gov­ern­ments has been col­lect­ed from orig­i­nal sources.

While civ­il ser­vice is a uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized insti­tu­tion; it was Con­fu­cius (551BC– 479 BC) in ancient Chi­na who pro­posed to recruit civ­il ser­vants on mer­it through exam­i­na­tion. In India, it was the British East India Com­pa­ny which estab­lished and orga­nized a pro­fes­sion­al body of impe­r­i­al civ­il ser­vants which was lat­er known as the Indi­an Civ­il Ser­vice. Because of its hard work, ded­i­ca­tion and high intel­lect, it soon reached the zenith of glo­ry and under­went a trans­for­ma­tion in the post-colo­nial peri­od.

On the one hand, mem­oirs of Indi­an civ­il ser­vants por­trayed the civ­il ser­vice through rose-tint­ed glass­es, espe­cial­ly ‘The Men Who Ruled India’ by Philip Woodruff Mason and ‘The Indi­an Civ­il Ser­vice: 1601–1930’ by L.S.S O’Malley. The oft referred and wide­ly quot­ed books on the sub­ject over­ly roman­ti­cized and ide­al­ized this insti­tu­tion and the char­ac­ter of its mem­bers. On the oth­er hand, the non-ser­vice authors reflect­ed a ten­den­cy to cut the civ­il ser­vants to size. Pub­lic per­cep­tion regard­ing the civ­il ser­vants, how­ev­er, remained far from pos­i­tive. This may be attrib­uted to its evo­lu­tion under the colo­nial rule. The colo­nial regime relied on this ‘steel frame of admin­is­tra­tion’ and firm­ly ruled over more than 25 mil­lion peo­ple through these civ­il ser­vants.

After inde­pen­dence, the new­ly emerged state of Pak­istan con­tin­ued with the pre­vi­ous pat­tern of recruit­ment and train­ing of the civ­il ser­vants. Upon their selec­tion in the civ­il ser­vice of Pak­istan, the new recruits were sent to Eng­land for train­ing. The first two decades wit­nessed an unprece­dent­ed rise in the author­i­ty of civ­il and mil­i­tary bureau­cra­cy in Pak­istan. This phe­nom­e­non can be attrib­uted to a cou­ple of fac­tors; in the absence of a uni­fied and mature polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, the British trained mil­i­tary and civ­il bureau­cra­cy rushed to fill the pow­er vac­u­um.

Sub­se­quent­ly, an era began which is termed as the mil­i­tary-bureau­crat­ic oli­garchy in the his­to­ry of Pak­istan. The col­lu­sion of both civ­il and mil­i­tary bureau­cra­cy for aggran­dize­ment of polit­i­cal pow­er pro­ject­ed their neg­a­tive image in pub­lic and ruined the pro­fes­sion­al integri­ty of the insti­tu­tion.
After the seces­sion of East Pak­istan in 1971, Zul­fiqar Ali Bhut­to, in an attempt to over­haul the admin­is­tra­tion and to put the civ­il bureau­cra­cy in its right­ful place, intro­duced admin­is­tra­tive reforms in 1974. These reforms cur­tailed the pow­ers of CSPs, which was renamed as the DMG (Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group). It also placed all ser­vice groups on an equal foot­ing as well as for­bid­ding the use of ser­vice titles such as CSPs, PSPs or FSPs accom­pa­ny­ing the names of the offi­cers. An inte­grat­ed recruit­ment scheme as well as a post-selec­tion train­ing pro­gram was intro­duced for all occu­pa­tion­al groups. The recruit­ment and train­ing is still done through the same chan­nel pro­posed under these reforms.

The gov­er­nance and the civ­il ser­vice are intrin­si­cal­ly linked; nei­ther can be stud­ied in iso­la­tion. In recent years, the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan has con­tract­ed loans with Inter­na­tion­al Finan­cial Insti­tu­tions such as IMF, ADB and the World Bank. In lieu of aid, these IFIs have shown a pro­cliv­i­ty to impose their pre­scrip­tions for good gov­er­nance as well. One of the sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nents of these pack­ages is the restruc­tur­ing and the right­siz­ing of the man­age­ment and finan­cial ser­vices. For instance, bil­lions of rupees were spent on the World Bank fund­ed Devo­lu­tion Plan which is now being mod­i­fied. Such poli­cies not only gen­er­at­ed a feel­ing of struc­tur­al insta­bil­i­ty and inse­cu­ri­ty among civ­il ser­vants but among their clien­tele as well, which is gen­er­al­ly the pub­lic at large.

Cur­rent­ly, the civ­il ser­vice of Pak­istan is at a cross­roads. Today, young entrants to the ser­vice are bewil­dered about their role and senior civ­il ser­vants are dis­il­lu­sioned with what they describe as undue polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in the exec­u­tive work, as well as with their post­ing and trans­fer which impinges upon their integri­ty.

The over­all socio-eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment has changed a lot. A pletho­ra of port­fo­lios, autonomous bod­ies, semi-autonomous insti­tu­tions, pub­lic sec­tor cor­po­ra­tions and depart­ments have not only opened new vis­tas of oppor­tu­ni­ty for civ­il ser­vants but have also trans­formed their roles. How­ev­er, this growth of the pub­lic sec­tor has been chal­lenged by the unprece­dent­ed growth of the pri­vate sec­tor, which has spillover effects on the roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties of civ­il ser­vants by bring­ing the pub­lic sec­tor into sharp con­trast. Besides this, mul­ti­ple oth­er fac­tors such as pop­u­la­tion explo­sion, dete­ri­o­rat­ing infra­struc­ture and increase in finan­cial lia­bil­i­ties of the state, have adverse­ly affect­ed pub­lic ser­vice deliv­ery. There is a huge bur­den on state resources because the growth in pop­u­la­tion has not wit­nessed a cor­re­spond­ing increase in the fis­cal space. Rather, the rela­tion­ship between the two remains inverse. There is one school of thought that strong­ly advo­cates the intru­sive and assertive role of the state. It is against this back­drop that a civ­il ser­vant has to carve out a niche for him­self between the two extremes.
It is hoped that our young civ­il ser­vants would con­tin­ue writ­ing on issues of vital impor­tance to help reform this ser­vice accord­ing to chang­ing needs and require­ments.