The post-Musharraf governments in Pakistan in 2008 closed down the local governments functioning under the control of the Pakistan Muslim League- Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q), Mutahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and others. The reason was political: most of the grassroots elected leaders belonged to the PML-Q and others and would have spent a chunk of the provincial development budget while not supporting the incumbent politician in by-elections. (The PML-Q government in Punjab too had starved the non-PML-Q local bodies of funds.)
In Punjab, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) was strong and just suffering the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) members in its coalition. It had no reason to talk about local bodies (LB) elections. In Karachi however the PPP was in bed with the MQM whose rise as a reputable party had been linked to its performance in the local government. It had to promise LB polls to keep the MQM from becoming frisky, which it became when it saw foot-dragging instead of action. The news last week was that Chief Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah while in the affectionate embrace of the newly appeased MQM at Nine Zero announced that ‘security situation in Sindh was improving but Elite Force was being set up to deal with any untoward incidents. He said that local body elections could be delayed as allies were being consulted on the issue’.
On 7 February 2011, the news from Sindh was: Legislation for new local bodies system was taking time and, due to budget-making, elections for local bodies could be delayed for two months, according to Provincial Minister for Local Bodies Agha Siraj Durrani. He said, ‘The PPP has handed its draft containing proposals for the new local government system to its coalition partners and now their reply is awaited’. Then he added: ‘If no agreement is arrived at on a draft law, it will become difficult to get the bill passed from the Assembly before the Budget, and the date for local bodies elections will have to be further extended’. He however insisted that criminal investigations against former
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will continue and that Hyderabad’s extension in new constituencies will be undone.
This could mean more trouble unless Mr Zardari intervenes and reins in his rather warlike ministers in charge of local bodies and interior in Sindh. The scene in Punjab is different. Here the PML-N has kicked out the PPP from its cabinet and is busy integrating the runaway PML-Q faction into its ranks and will not go for LB polls unless it is certain it is not losing out to
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belonging to other parties. And that because
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spend LB funds during general elections to help with the election logistics. Hence, the 2013 elections are tied to the LB polls.
No one can deny that democracy comes into its own when it comes closer to people. The way it has come close to people in the West is local governments where cities and towns govern themselves autonomously. Before this close-to-the-people system, the state was devolved to the provinces after much thought was expended on the ills of the all-powerful state. Before colonisation, India was fairly ‘devolved’ because it did not have a centralised state; and scholars disagree whether there even was an ‘Indian nation’. Afghanistan is ‘devolved’ even today, which means it is hardly internally sovereign.
Therefore, the nation-state is first. After that there is devolution, to prevent it from eating its own children. Once the provinces become autonomous – this is called federalism – there is need to prevent neglect of people living inside them. That is when local governments are required. India is fairly devolved because its states are quite autonomous; Pakistan is not so devolved because its provinces still demand the full measure of autonomy under federalism. (The 18th Amendment will do the job but we are still not begun with it on the ground in real earnest.) India has a system of local governments spelled out in its Constitution but has acted badly on it. Pakistan has been experimenting with it off-and-on and imposed it under Musharraf on its reluctant provinces from the federal centre with a general guiding the new system.
The provinces had to devolve to Panchayat Raj in India under the Constitution but were most reluctant to do so, till Congress Party in 1993 passed the 73rd and 74th Amendments obliging the states to allow a three-tier system of elected councils in towns with more than two million people. The councils have 29 subjects spelled out for them and have one-third of their seats reserved for women. Have the states obliged? Maharashtra and Gujarat always had functional local councils, but Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal have made new strides. Others like Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Orissa and Bihar have simply turned their face away.
Some Indians lament that the panchayats, wherever functional, have generally succumbed to corruption, yielding powers to bureaucrats and politicians. The moneys are usually made to disappear and scholars recommend an improved auditing system before this evil can be rooted out. The question in both India and Pakistan is that devolving to the grassroots becomes a circular argument in an economically disadvantaged country where the writ of the government becomes markedly weak outside the big cities.
Let us look at the failure of the local governments in Pakistan. In a generally ‘top-down’ country, the Local Governments Plan 2000 offered a ‘bottom-up’ governance in the face of a negative national memory about this form of devolution embraced by military dictators when they appeared on the scene to usurp the power at the centre and replace provincial leadership with local leaders loyal to the dictator. But the 2000 ‘reform’ was accompanied by civil service reforms that removed the bureaucratic leadership in the districts that browbeat the local leaders in the past.
What are the conditions in which local governments can survive? Ironically, what is required is a strong central state that can prevent the devolution from being usurped by local elites. An empowered civil society too is needed with a strong bond with the central authority so that the power of the feudal elite can be broken. After that a strong ideologically motivated political party with strong grassroots links is needed at the helm. Also needed are the reforms. The first reform is the structural one, reducing land holdings so that decentralisation of authority doesn’t deliver the population into the hands of local feudal lords. The second reform is open political competition to free up spaces of popular dialogue.
Pakistan’s local governments are representative but not yet participatory. Real benefit of the system will accrue the day local elected members are allowed to administer themselves. There was a lack of participatory planning in the system under Local Government Plan 2000; there was ‘elite capture’ of the system in many areas; and there were structural flaws in the system that blocked progress.
Land reform in India has in a way helped pave the way for local government. In West Bengal an ideologically motivated ruling party has actually used the local system to break the system of big land holdings. But in most states however the provinces are loath to devolve their authority to the local governments especially as that also devolves many of the funds that the politicians may like to use for their political and personal purposes. The system is endangered by the antagonism of the provincial politicians who hate the system as a trespass into their domain.
In Pakistan the local governments are in chrysalis and therefore should not be judged too harshly, but the provincial control of their finances has resulted in the politicisation of the system which may in the end destroy it. The chief minister can punish a local government for being politically non-aligned by holding back its funding and choosing the local MPA to act as its surrogate. Chief ministers in Pakistan have been known to overwhelm the non-party institutions by placing their party men in control in anticipation of the general election where rigging of the polls can be easily accomplished by using the local government facilities.
The floods in 2010 were an administrative fiasco because local governments were not in place and the people simply did not know whom to approach for help. The army had to come in and foreign help had to be accepted because the state was simply absent from the scene. Had the LB system been in place much of the confusion of ‘who is in charge’ would have been removed.
