Will the people rule now?

Faiz Sahib’s immortal words Ab raj karegi khalq-e-khuda - jo mein bhi hun, aur tum bhi ho are likely to echo across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as more than 45,000 villagers are elected to about 3,000 village councils when voters cast their ballots on May 30.
By July 2015 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s new local government system will be in place. Its three-tiered structure includes village councils in rural areas and neighbourhood councils in urban areas. These will become the new basic administrative unit in the province, bringing governance closer to people than the former union council that will cease to exist as per local government legislation passed in 2013. Creating the new basic unit is an exceptionally bold and significant move. It has the seeds of a sea-change, if not a tsunami, in rural governance.
For the first time ever, directly elected councillors will have the authority to list the development needs of each village, oversee implementation of rural projects and monitor government service delivery. Women, peasants, workers, youth, and non-Muslims are guaranteed opportunities to be elected through reserved seats. A fund for village councils will allow fiscal decentralisation to this basic tier.
If it functions well, a village council can tackle persistent and pervasive problems like ghost teachers, absence of medicines in BHUs, and lack of drinking water. These have successfully resisted numerous reform efforts in the past, denying even very basic services to rural citizens. Village councils will also give rural voters greater access to their local representatives so that they may directly demand better government services and express their development aspirations.
But there are also some warning snags. The success of the new system will depend on the ability of policymakers to anticipate and remove them. Two are critical. The first is the likely isolation of the basic tier of village councils. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s new local government system draws heavily from its 2001 predecessor introduced by Gen Musharraf’s regime. But the new structure ignores an essential element of the earlier system – ie vertical integration between the different tiers of local government.
In the 2001 model, a directly elected union council nazim also became a member of the district council, and the naib nazim became a member of the tehsil council. This dual membership enabled the union council leaders to represent its interests at higher levels of local governance. In the new Khyber Pakhtunkhwa model, councillors will be directly elected on the same day to each of the three tiers: district, tehsil and village/neighbourhood.
It is feared that these independent tiers may become disconnected islands of governance. Such isolation will affect village councils the most as they have the authority to identify development priorities but will not be able to implement them unless they are included in the development plans drawn up and approved by the district and tehsil councils.
The absence of coordination mechanisms fuels the fear more. Even if attempted, the large numbers of village councils may defy coordinated efforts. District Abbottabad, for instance, will have 195 village councils, 14 neighbourhood councils, two tehsil councils and one district council.
With coordination mechanisms missing, it is likely that the estimated 3,000 councillors elected to Abbottabad’s 195 village councils will remain hostage to 77 members of the district council and 78 members of the two tehsil councils. They will also be dependent upon fiscal transfers from the provincial finance commission as they do not have any independent revenue generating authority.
Overlapping jurisdiction is another snag. The village council has the authority to identify development schemes. The much more powerful district council can do the same, and has added authority to approve and fund rural development schemes. But whose scheme is it anyway? Unless clearly separated jurisdiction of each tier of local governance is defined, squabbles over ownership of schemes are likely to persist.
The large number of councillors will compound the problem, as too many cooks may want to stir the brew! Rural people may continue to witness the bizarre spectacle of a single scheme inaugurated multiple times by different public representatives, each claiming credit and showcasing the scheme as a fulfilled electoral promise made to voters. Such spats can easily degenerate into more serious conflicts if party affiliations of councillors differ.
A greater number of councillors with unclear or overlapping jurisdiction may also increase rent-seeking – which was one of the failings of the 2001 local government. If the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa law had clearly stated that the village council has jurisdiction over schemes included within its limits, the possibility of confusion, conflict or corruption would be significantly reduced or even avoided.
These snags are irritants that can easily be removed with keen oversight and prompt policy action. We will have to wait on that. For now it is time for voters, women and men, to exercise their right to choose their local government representatives on May 30.
After the votes are cast and the councils are functional we will know whether the new local government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the day promised in Faiz Sahib’s unforgettable lines: lazim hai kay hum bhi dekhay gay, woh din kay jiska waada hai.
The writer is a governance specialist and executive director of the Omar Asghar Khan Foundation. Email: rdohad@oakdf.org.pk