CIVIL SERVICE REFORMS
‘With every passing year of our career, we
increasingly feel a steep decline in our morale
and motivation. There is a disjunction
between what we idealized to do for society
and what the real life has offered’. This is
what you will hear from most of the civil
servants in any candid and informal
discussion. But this is just one side of the
story. On the other side, citizens, ideally the
tax paying clients of public services blame
civil servants for inefficiency, callousness,
corruption and arrogance. What it implies is
that something has been pathologically
wrong with the civil service in Pakistan.
In the books of rules, the definition of a civil
servant is very broad and all-encompassing
but I am referring only those who represent a
widely-known misnomer i.e. ‘Central Superior
Services’ because the members of these
services and occupational groups run the
entire state machinery.
The issue of civil service reforms has
practically remained an unfinished agenda in
Pakistan during different regimes as either it
could never make a headway beyond the
stage of policy drafts or if on a couple of
occasions past governments took practical
steps, they failed because of their lackluster
motives. In future, prior to any reforms
initiative, it will be important to understand
the underlying causes of the decay of civil
service before anything else. Without proper
diagnosis, even the most well-trained
physician would do more harm than curing
an illness. The diagnostic framework for civil
service reforms will require seeing the
problem from the perspectives of civil
service, politics and global political economy.
Like all other major institutions of state,
Pakistan inherited the institution of civil
service which was created by the British
Indian Empire. During the heydays of the
empire, the civil service as an institution was
acknowledged and glorified as ‘the steel
frame of the Raj’ due to institutional ability to
maintain law and order and collect taxes. The
structure of civil services was based on
Weber an notions of political neutrality, merit
based recruitment, guaranteed tenure and a
decent salary. After independence, however, a
gradual decay started and with changing
circumstances the survival-instinct of civil
servants ushered into a culture of Faustian
bargains which promised immediate gains.
The result was a new trend of collusive
partnerships both with dictatorial regimes
and political governments.
The temptation of dividends accruing from a
culture of patronage is too strong to resist,
like cardinal sins, both for political parties
and civil servants. This is detrimental to the
collective public interest as it robs the civil
servants of their required ability to speak
truth to power when it is required in matters
of public policy importance. However, in
Pakistan’s political culture; the political-
bureaucratic relationship has become quite
deep rooted due to nature of social power
relations which manifest themselves in terms
of power and patronage based politics at
constituency level. In this perspective, it
would be naive to expect a total detachment
of civil service from politics. This implies that
in future if governments want to reform the
civil service the process must begin with a
dialogue to determine the contours of rules of
engagement between politicians and civil
servants.
For the prevailing state of affairs of civil
service it would be unfair to place entire
blame on politicians. Corruption, inertia, rent-
seeking and turf wars between civil service
cadres speak volumes about the contribution
of civil servants themselves. Astonishingly,
none of the civil service cadres have ever
proposed any structural reforms themselves
apart from tug of wars for vested interests.
Quite recently, they have demonstrated a
determination to go even to the extent of
blackmailing a government by threats of
collective resignations or strikes. Even the
upright among the civil servants often lose
moral ground when they readily extend the
favours on the requests of close aides, which
they otherwise may refuse to politicians in
the name of merit or rules.
The ascendance of neoliberal philosophy,
since Thatcher and Reagan eras, to create
favorable investment conditions for global
capital requires deregulation, privatization
and minimalist states. This was relatively
easier to be implemented in debt-ridden
countries such as Pakistan by coercively
imposing the IMF sponsored ‘Structural
Adjustment Programs’ demanding
withdrawal of subsidies and implementation
of global ‘good governance’ agenda. Under
such pressures, the reforms in tax structure
or administrative decentralization during
Musharraf era could not prove successful as
imposition of such structural transformation
under external pressure lacked basic
ingredients of will and determination which
ensure positive outcomes.
The French philosopher Michael Foucault
says that the most sophisticated form of
power is an ability to control thoughts and
ideas. This is what the IFIs and donors have
successfully done by making our elites
believe in what they want them to believe.
For example, the idea that private sector
always epitomize efficiency and therefore
companies should do the work of
government. But private businesses too often
collapse. Likewise, a belief that for every
domestic problem there exist some one-size-
fits-all type ‘international best practices’
which if simply copied can solve all domestic
policy riddles. For example, the notion of
‘Public Private Partnership’ is widely believed
as a magic wand while ignoring that private
sector enters any partnership only for secure
profit maximization.
The imported ideas like exotic seeds can often
fail to bear fruits unless tested and improved
for local soil. Our peculiar history, culture,
values and evolution of society demands
home grown policies and practices. If some
foreign ideas seem indispensable, their
adoption should precede an exhaustive
evaluation of adaptability to indigenous
circumstances. The genuine grievances of
civil servants such as poor correlation
between their qualifications and
responsibilities vis-à-vis their meager salaries
or issues like absence of tenure protection
too merit substantial consideration. Similarly,
a renegotiation of balance between exigencies
of politics and requirements of meritocracy is
important to ensure a fair and just social
order while catering to the requirements of
political system. The ability to critically
analyze the prescriptions of donor
institutions and to suggest indigenous
solutions embedded in domestic realities can
pave the way for effective civil service
reforms. If the maladies of civil service are
not properly identified any future reforms
initiative would be meaningless.