Crisis and cure in development

Development planning is the most fundamental aspect of any nation’s growth and development. How a nation plans its development defines how it develops – and so, the quality and effectiveness of development outcomes are intrinsically linked to the quality of planning that precedes them.

Thus, understanding the pattern of development a nation is carrying requires a rigorous understanding of its development planning. Its importance is significantly amplified in a highly resource-constrained country, such as Pakistan, where strategic allocations and utilisation of limited resources are critical to minimising the wastage of resources and maximising the associated benefits.

In such settings, high-quality and meticulous development planning is not simply beneficial; it is imperative. Principles should be to divert scarce resources to the development projects that generate the highest possible economic and social returns. Development strategies must therefore be broad-based as well as fiscally and socially sustainable. It should be planned in such a way that its fruits reach the broadest segments of society while ensuring all aspects of sustainability.

To make this possible, the whole development process must be inclusive and should actively involve and engage those who are directly or indirectly affected by it or can contribute to its sustainability and long-term effectiveness. Thus, to ensure development is equitable, relevant, and effective, the planning process should incorporate the insights and voices of key stakeholders, including local communities, scholars, development practitioners, and funding agencies.

In complete contrast to the bottom-up, inclusive approach, the development planning in Pakistan has largely been a top-down exercise, mainly driven by bureaucratic and political interests. A critical examination highlights a range of chronic challenges that undermine the inclusiveness, efficiency, and impact of public investments in Pakistan’s development planning.

One of the most fundamental and critical issues is the centralisation of decision-making and resource allocation, both at the federal and provincial levels. With a non-existent or ineffective planning authority for local governments, provincial and federal governments decide the development fate at the grassroots of society. Even though the 18th Amendment to the constitution promised to enhance provincial autonomy, actual planning power remains concentrated in ministries and bureaucracies far removed from local communities. As a result, development priorities often reflect the preferences of federal or provincial elites rather than the urgent needs of grassroots populations.

This centralisation of authority reflects centralised political influence over development decisions by provincial as well as federal political entities. Instead of dealing with the public’s real needs, development projects are frequently designed or tailored to benefit the political interests of legislators, particularly those from the ruling party or their allied powerful interest groups. The chronic practice results in the allocation of massively scarce resources to less sustainable, inefficient projects, far from the actual needs of the broader segments of society, detached from evidence-based planning.

In this context, rather than focusing on a long-term development roadmap, the scarce public funds are directed towards short-term, visible cosmetic infrastructure schemes, mainly pavements, roads, or cosmetic public functionaries to gain political mileage. A critical outcome of this pattern of centralized political capture is the complete exclusion of grassroots community inputs in the development process. Despite constitutional provisions for devolution of power to all levels of governance in various constitutional amendments, including the 18th Amendment, the genuine devolution agenda remains incomplete. District and municipal governments, if they exist, lack the authority, fiscal space, and capacity to plan and execute meaningful development interventions. In many regions, local governments either do not exist or serve as administrative arms of provincial governments or bureaucracy.

In the 21st century, Pakistan has only two cycles of fully functional local government systems from 2001-2008, after which subsequent governments either delayed their implementation or restructured them as toothless entities according to the top-down interests in a less effective way. This situation highlights the gravity of seriousness towards the scope for localised needs-based planning.

Lack of a grassroots governance system highlights the absence of a formalised platform for ordinary citizens to articulate their needs or to propose and prioritise projects that directly affect their lives. Thus, the absence of well-structured and effective participation mechanisms leaves grassroot communities, the actual beneficiaries of the development process, marginalised in contributing to the development process to address their real problems.

This centralised planning system, on one side, restricts need-based planning; on the other side, it undermines transparency and public accountability. While development programms and annual budgets of all levels of government are technically public documents, they are often bureaucratic, dense, and difficult for the public to comprehend. Development project details and budgetary classifications, as well as justifications, are presented in technical jargon, restricting meaningful public scrutiny. Thus, a non-existent or ineffective local government system which coupled with the massive technicalities of relevant documentation, constrains citizens from tracking how public funds are being spent or holding decision-makers accountable for poor performance or misallocation.

Another major inefficiency in the current development planning of Pakistan is poor inter-departmental coordination, leading to duplication of work and wastage of time and resources. Due to the absence of a clear division of development authority and monitoring mechanism, different ministries and departments often pursue overlapping or conflicting projects. This practice at one hand leads to wastage of public funds and on the other hand undermines the potential for integrated and cross-sectoral development strategies, an essential requirement for tackling complex challenges like poverty, food insecurity, terrorism, climate change, food insecurity, education, health and urban planning.

Another critical but extremely neglected component of effective development planning in Pakistan is the neglected role of academia and research, which can provide data-driven insights, innovative development models, and evidence-based solutions to local development challenges. Academia and research institutes, through rigorous research in the light of contemporary development theories and practices, can help identify needs and suggest viable, effective and sustainable solutions accordingly. Involving these scholarly avenues in the development planning and future forecasting strengthens policy coherence, improves strategic foresight, and ensures that development is structured on the foundations of knowledge rather than short-term political agendas.

Finally, the entire system suffers from low institutional capacity, especially at the technical and operational levels. Staff within line ministries and planning departments often lack formal training in modern methods of project appraisal, cost-benefit analysis, monitoring, and impact evaluation. As a result, many project proposals are weakly designed, lack proper feasibility assessments, and fail to include effective monitoring and evaluation components. This capacity deficit reduces the effectiveness of public investments and diminishes the state’s ability to deliver development outcomes efficiently and equitably.

Taken together, these challenges reflect a systemic failure to implement participatory, inclusive, and results-oriented development planning in Pakistan. Reforms are urgently needed to devolve power to the grassroots level, build local capacity, institutionalise community engagement, provide high-quality human resources, ensure institutional capacity building and improve coordination and transparency at all levels of government.

The role of technology is also critical, from planning to implementation and post-implementation, modern techniques, technologies and platforms should be used to make this system more productive and efficient. Finally, the role of academia must be deeply integrated into the development planning through structured and effective partnerships with universities as well as research institutes. These institutions possess the intellectual capacity, methodologies, as well as analytical capabilities essential to produce evidence-based development plans that are sustainable and relevant to the societal needs at all levels.

Integrating university research agendas and student projects with local development challenges, under the umbrella of state institutions, not only enriches the academic quality but also fosters a culture of socially responsible high-impact scholarship. If planned and executed, such an approach ensures that higher education institutions of Pakistan serve as active contributors to the national development.

At one end, it will bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and its practical application, and on the other end, it will create a pool of future experts and leaders, deeply attuned to the development needs of the local community. Only by addressing these deep-rooted structural barriers can Pakistan move toward a development model that is genuinely aligned with the aspirations of its people.

The writer is an assistant professor at the Air University, Aerospace & Aviation Campus, Kamra. He can be reached at: nayyar.rafique@aack.au.edu.pk