As the country is rattled by the deluge, the question that arises is this: Could at least a part of the havoc have been averted? Yes, a good deal of the destruction is attributable to force majeure. However, more far-sighted planning and better execution would certainly have mitigated a great deal of the disaster.
Pakistan is one country that is highly vulnerable to climate change. Extreme temperatures, heavy rains and melting glaciers combine to make the rivers overflow. In 2022, the floods claimed some 1,700 lives in Pakistan and caused economic loss to the tune of $30 billion, nearly 10 per cent of the country’s annual economic output.
Pakistan is also a low-riparian country compared to India. Hence, whenever floods erupt in the western part of India, the excess river waters are released into Pakistan. This year, both the Ravi and Sutlej (as well as Beas, which merges with Sutlej close to India’s border with Pakistan near Kasur) Rivers, over which India has exclusive right under the Indus Waters Treaty (which India unilaterally suspended earlier this year), have remained in super flood. That’s the reason that these two rivers, which otherwise remain almost dry as they flow through Pakistan’s territory, have overflowed, wreaking grave damage.
It won’t, however, be fair to lay the entire blame at the door of a furious Mother Nature. Human factors must also take the rap.
The most vulnerable to floods are the communities, mostly rural or tribal, which live by riverbeds. Persuading them to leave their homes, where they’ve been living for years, once and for all has proved exceedingly difficult – and understandably so. But why are NoCs issued to new housing societies situated close to riverbeds? In Lahore, several residential compounds have sprung up in recent years along the River Ravi. Some of these neighbourhoods were inundated in this year’s monsoon.
Violation of building laws, illegal constructions and poor drainage systems make cities vulnerable to monsoon. Forests are a natural barrier to floods. At the same time, deforestation is lucrative for builders and timber traders. Forests account for only 4.9 per cent of Pakistan’s land, among the lowest in the world. As population explosion and increasing urbanisation are generating rising demand for more housing enclaves, even this small scale of forestation is in danger of shrinking.
While the current monsoon season underlies the need for effective flood management, Pakistan is on the brink of becoming a water-scarce country. The problem is not one of water availability, but of inefficient water management. More than 90 per cent of the total water consumption in the country is accounted for by agriculture, which thrives on water-intensive crops, such as rice, sugarcane, wheat, cotton and maize. Heavily subsidised water pricing in agriculture, to the benefit of big, politically influential landlords, encourages inefficient use of this precious natural resource.
Whether we need more dams and barrages or we should discard the ‘dam-centric’ approach is a question that ought to be left to the experts to answer. But the problem in our governance system is that the views of the experts are short-shrifted and planning is done by Jacks of all trades, euphemistically called generalists (not to be confused with journalists).
On paper, Pakistan has an elaborate planning mechanism. Article 156 of the constitution sets up the National Economic Council (NEC) as the apex planning body in the country. The council is headed by the prime minister and includes, among others, the four provincial chief ministers. The NEC shall review the overall condition of the country and formulate plans in respect of financial, commercial, social and economic policies. Long-term plans and Public Sector Development Programmes (PSDP) require the council’s approval. The NEC is assisted by its executive committee (Ecnec).
Then there’s the Ministry of Planning, Development, and Special Initiative and its principal arm, the Planning Commission (PC), which is headed by the prime minister. With representatives from the private sector and NGOs as its members, assisted by officials from the Economist and Planner Group of the Civil Service, the PC is mandated to formulate long-term development plans and frameworks that encompass multiple socio-economic sectors. It also advises the federal cabinet on economic, social and infrastructure policies. The PC develops cost and physical standards for effective technical and economic appraisal of public sector projects. Provinces have their own planning and development departments, with a similar mandate.
Why doesn’t such an elaborate mechanism make for effective planning? The answer is in the creed-like devotion to the principle of administrative efficiency in Pakistan’s governance system. The principle assumes that governance is essentially a matter of general administrative skills, rather than specialised knowledge, and therefore a member of the administrative service – the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) – is competent enough to handle the most intricate of situations and sort out the thorniest of issues.
On the strength of the principle of administrative efficiency, PAS officers are deemed thoroughly capable of spearheading any activity associated with governance: finalising deals with foreign donors, spearheading the country in trade negotiations, handling the security situation, maintaining law and order, leading budget preparations, drawing up fiscal policy, meeting revenue targets, supervising infrastructure related projects, steering human capital development, managing disasters – and what not. It’s like asking a lawyer to do an engineer’s job and entrusting a doctor with maintaining the accounts of a mega enterprise.
The Economists and Planners Group (E&PG) is a specialised cadre, which, as the name suggests, is out to take the lead in economic management. Be that as it may, economic management remains an almost exclusive domain of the PAS. The economic ministries – finance, commerce, economic affairs, industries, agriculture and planning – are invariably headed by bureaucrats from the PAS, whose core competence consists of administering districts and divisions. The E&PG officers are relegated to a subordinate role. The generalists are thus the bosses, and specialists are their caddies.
The principle of administrative efficiency has some obvious flaws. One, as a rule, the generalist’s approach is only skin-deep. They can’t go to the heart of the problem at hand and thus come out with only quick-fix solutions, such as scaling up or slashing the budget and reshuffling a few ‘problematic’ members of the team. Specialists working under a ‘dynamic’ generalist are given the shaft for losing themselves in the labyrinth of technicalities and thus causing inordinate delay in disposing of the matter. The final outcome may catch the eye, but usually it doesn’t appeal to the mind. Surely, it doesn’t benefit society.
Two, since generalists are generally not well-versed in the matters they are seized with, they feel a sense of insecurity. The combination of ignorance and insecurity makes them highly susceptible to pressure from the top. That is why political masters, on balance, prefer a ‘clear-headed’ and ‘quick-witted’ official of the administrative service to a ‘confused’ and ‘hairsplitting’ specialist. The stage is set for politician-bureaucrat logrolling, which has made effective long-term planning a tall order.
Those in charge who are trying to retool the civil service should start by throwing the principle of administrative efficiency into the scrapheap. Let specialists, not generalists, lead planning and economic management.
The writer is an Islamabad-based columnist. He tweets/posts hussainhzaidi and can be reached at: hussainhzaidigmail.com