The Town as the hub for planning and management
Nationalism and democratic governance assume that everyone born in Pakistan should be committed to the state. This premise is the cause of failure of our political-administrative structure. Practically the state is unable to conceive of a social contact with our pastoral demography, nor can it offer utilities, facilities, conveniences; or any quid-pro-quo in lieu of cooperation. Water is probably the only need that a government can supply to start a meaningful dialogue of rights and duties with pastoral Pakistanis. Even this may not be addressed at a national or provincial level due to ecological demands.
Economic issues, such as trade, commerce, industry, and political economy, like water & power, civic duties waste management and communication display a communal disparity in the above table. Their importance increases either because of a rise in population of a unit, or the low performance in the mid-administrative level. Only in functioning of police, their acceptability is determined by performance at the provincial level.
Modern governance initiatives for unifying diversity must be planned on a national scale but executed at a communal level. Legal, legislative and procedural matters will need to be addressed in the implementation of the plans. It seems that both, our administrative institutions and polity, are nicely poised after seventy years of independent modernization under desi leadership [no matter how flawed] to build a participatory national grassroots economy. Decision making powers regarding economic affairs should be vested in the lowest level of participatory representative communities, such as villages, muhallas or occupational groups and coordinated through the local government structures within which they lie.
Naturally the Tehsil should be empowered to regulate matters within its boundaries to the extent of its scope of governance. The Tehsil should be able to guard the interests of its polity in provincial ‘Councils of Common Interest’. The smaller communities could then debate mechanisms of enforcement that do not have to be uniform at the higher level, thus allowing for local laws and communal regulations.
Within the broad structure of the national economy, currency, monetary/fiscal policy and trade on the national scale, the common pool of natural resources in the water and energy sectors must fall under federal control. All other matters, including, transport, roads and means of communication may be settled with participation, and in accordance with plans of a community. Communal ownership should extend to maintenance and upkeep so as to ensure that there is no lack of responsibility if a community experiences vandalism. What we need is that any ‘community’ or ‘locality’ which is willing to interface with the tehsil, district, provincial or national government in a political space may be allowed to do so.
To the extent of urban management, this is not a revolutionary proposal; a mayor of a city would generally manage municipal affairs in just such a manner. District administrations too have been using this mode of operation when assigned tasks by a provincial authority. It does however, become a unique revolutionary idea when the tehsil, the village, and even the ‘community’ within a rural or urban construct is required to have a political role. Yet this is the truly operative ‘functional’ unit of the Pakistani polity across the board.
If the community is used as the basic unit of governance, a town [or ward in case of a big city] should be the hub where various administrative & political institutions are managed and balanced because beyond this the communal interface becomes weak and governance will cease to be accountable.
Within the roster of subjects given above, the political status of trade communities [not as state sponsored unions but as state recognized bodies of citizens], urban localities [such as a muhalla or bazaar] and ethnic identities [Gujjars or Jats or Kumhars] or traditional castes that have lost their monopoly on an occupation should be recognized as viable political entities. Such political entities would need to be registered with an existing tier of government [local, provincial or national] to negotiate protocols of rights, duties, privileges and identify communal functions required from them. A protocol would include procedures for assessing performance of the body while leaving formulation of its internal procedures to the body itself. Procedures for arbitration regarding performance would also need to be included in the protocol of registration.
In order for an urban unit to attain its potential, the human factor is of prime importance. The ability, will, and vision to make use of its natural and human endowments are required to convert the “necessary and sufficient” conditions for urbanization into reality. This applies as much to the geography [size-shape] of a state, as to its population [the substance that makes a society] and the intellectual-spiritual essence [that we identify as a civilization]. This is the task of the communal leadership. The advantage of this system is that not only do the citizens pay only at the grass root; they also reap the benefits directly at the level of the community. The state on its side, actually gains the full cooperation for its projects and no party fails to live up to the social contract; which is in fact drawn up by mutual consent like that of a vendor and purchaser.
From the family, through community, clan and religion, to the largest demographic unit of a country, the nation, an average Pakistani has a web of commitments, rights & duties with each link. Many people who have more than subsistence resources also like to invest part of their financial, material and emotional assets, time and energy, in the “hereafter”. If this kind of effort is coordinated collectively at the communal level, it could be better utilized but state sponsorship of such plans is likely to lead to mistrust.
Now governance, in my view, is primarily the administrative function that links a state to its citizens through equity in political economy by managing social resources: human and material. This premise has been the undercurrent of my discourse so far. It rests on the socio-political roster of duties and rights of which the most formal is the quid pro quo of taxes, the most metaphysical is faith, and the most innocuous is culture. While the metaphysical needs a delicate balance in control, culture is virtually ungovernable and taxes need hardly conform to a permanent tradition. In fact, with the current practice of ‘annual’ budgets, it is essential for the state to renegotiate them. From election slogans and manifestos, to the tweaking of tax schedules in order to promote or control an economic need, taxes are only constant when the state is in a grove.
This, then, is the window from which a state can manipulate its relationship with citizens. Although the financial incentive is only one of many motives and objectives that drive an individual or a community, it is the primary need of state. No state in history existed or survived without the financial contributions of citizens. This is because the state needs to employ a workforce for the administrative functions; and a workforce has material needs for which it must either receive goods and services directly or on payment. In either case, these have to be provided by the citizens who are beneficiaries of the existence of state. Even if they provide the inputs in kind, even then a procedure of taxation is needed.
The primary expectation of citizens and communities from the state is security. Internally this entails a policing function and externally a military one. As an adjunct to the policing function is a legal-judicial fabric for adjudication; to which police provides enforcement. However, the citizen also has other needs some of which the state is to provide while for the others, citizens and communities look to society. Now, since the policing of society is a primary function of the state, links between state, society, individual and community become a loop in which almost all the expectations and aspirations of ‘the governed’ are linked with the current ‘government’ as the executor of the will and policies of state.
This brings us full circle: state depends on taxes, its functionaries depend on income, the polity depends on government, which in turn regulates society, and through it the entire spectrum of expectations of citizens. Thus taxes may be used to manipulate all social indicators of society, not only through monetary incentives but also through service delivery. When a government assigns tasks to its functionaries and when it selects activities for investing the resources of the citizens collected in taxes, it is satisfactory for the polity only if its investment and its output fulfill the expectations and objectives of the people.
Local government should be given three kinds of options for decision making:
One, where they can initiate communal projects to be met through internal sources;
two, for subjects like waste management, provision of utilities or infrastructure, education, sanitation and health, to be dealt with through the collaboration of a higher administrative tier, as part of its initiative. Security and maintenance of these projects after completion would be a communal responsibility, to be regulated and overseen by the originating administration;
three, federal or provincial governments could offer certain facilities {health, education, culture and language – provincial; infrastructure, roads, electricity, water and gas – federal and provincial} with special incentives for prioritized regions on similar terms.
Federal government would treat with transporters, industrial cartels and organizations of international trade.
Provincial governments would be expected to cater to ethnic communities which are marginalized or likely to suffer exploitation, and to deal with rural, urban, inter-city, inter-province and intra-provincial political entities.