The draft 27th Constitutional Amendment is being presented as a technical adjustment to improve coordination and efficiency. Yet its implications are far more profound and troubling. Beneath the language of “streamlining governance” lies a clear political objective: to reverse the powers devolved to the provinces under the 18th Amendment. The proposed move to bring education, health, and the broader social sector back under federal authority risks undoing more than a decade of institutional development and provincial autonomy.
The timing could not be more damaging. Just as provinces have begun to establish their own policy directions, administrative capacities, and institutional identities, the 27th Amendment threatens to shrink their authority. The present debate is not simply about operational efficiency; it concerns the very architecture of Pakistan’s federation.
The 18th Amendment, passed unanimously by Parliament, was widely understood as a corrective measure against decades of centralised rule. It sought to restore balance by returning powers to the provinces on the premise that they understand their own needs, histories, and social landscapes better than distant bureaucracies in Islamabad. Health, education, and social welfare were devolved not as experiments, but as expressions of democratic trust. The 27th Amendment, however, appears to be an attempt to claw back that trust.
Consider the case of higher education. After devolution, each province was expected to establish its own Higher Education Commission to set curricula, research priorities, and funding mechanisms suited to its context. Sindh and Punjab made steps in this direction, but the federal commission never truly relinquished control. To this day, the federal HEC retains authority over funding, accreditation, and policy frameworks, effectively relegating provincial commissions to secondary roles. Under the guise of maintaining “national standards,” central authority has been preserved. The result is a confused dual structure that favours federal dominance and hinders provincial innovation.
The same pattern is evident in health and social development. Devolution was meant to allow provinces to set priorities according to local needs—whether maternal mortality in one region, malnutrition in another, or mental health elsewhere. Yet federal ministries continued to control donor coordination, programme funding, and national schemes. Every time provinces built momentum, the centre intervened. The 27th Amendment now seeks to formalise this interference by granting constitutional cover to centralisation.
Centralisation, by contrast, produces neatness on paper and dysfunction in practice. It prioritises uniformity over effectiveness
Welfare services, child protection, and population planning have suffered similarly. Provinces were given responsibility but not resources. Without reliable funding and full authority, they cannot sustain reforms, plan long-term strategies, or innovate. What appears to be provincial autonomy is often little more than autonomy permitted at the centre’s discretion.
What Pakistan requires is not a return to centralisation, but patient, sustained investment in provincial capacity. Devolution is a process, not an event. Provinces were never expected to become fully efficient overnight. The federal government should have acted as a partner and facilitator—offering technical support, training, and collaborative frameworks. Instead, it hovered above them, questioning competence and gradually reclaiming control. Central intervention has not built capacity; it has undermined it.
If provinces are allowed consistent authority, they can develop expertise, create policy responsive to local conditions, and build resilient governance systems. Education improves when curricula reflect local histories, languages, and economies. Health improves when budgeting, staffing, and infrastructure decisions are made closer to the communities affected. Social welfare strengthens when it is rooted in the lived realities of the people.
Centralisation, by contrast, produces neatness on paper and dysfunction in practice. It prioritises uniformity over effectiveness.
The push behind the 27th Amendment also reveals an enduring discomfort with shared power in Islamabad. Provincial independence is treated as fragmentation rather than federalism. Yet all successful federations—from Canada to Germany—operate on the premise that national unity grows from provincial strength, not provincial subordination.
The consequences of this amendment will be lasting. It will discourage provinces from investing in their own institutional development. Why build provincial HECs or strengthen health departments if ultimate authority lies in Islamabad? Why cultivate administrative talent if key decisions will always be overruled? Smaller provinces, already navigating structural disadvantages, will once again feel marginalised and dependent.
Centralisation may offer the illusion of simplicity, but it generates deeper complexity. The federal government cannot meaningfully understand or respond to the educational needs of Gwadar or the healthcare realities of Tharparkar. Provincial governments can. Strengthening them is not a threat to the federation; it is its only viable future.
The 27th Amendment represents a step backwards. It signals that provincial autonomy is conditional and temporary. This is a dangerous message in a country whose stability depends on the confidence and inclusion of its federating units. Pakistan’s strength has never come from control; it has come from partnership.
The provinces are not extensions of the centre. They are the federation. Weakening them is weakening Pakistan.