Dr. Ishrat Hussain has been known to us, Pakistanis, for a very long time and he is respected for his knowledge, experience and services. Most of us recognize him as the former Governor of State Bank and a man from the World Bank while several others are aware of his role in the capacity of the Director of the Centre of Excellence, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. Still not so many know anything about another passion of Ishrat Sahab i.e. reforming and restructuring the Civil Services of Pakistan. A few among us read the report which was formulated by the National Commission for Government Reforms (2006 – 2008), chaired by him.

I met Ishrat Hussain only couple of times when I was posted as a Joint Secretary in the Planning Division, at Islamabad, and he came more than once as a member of the panel to interview the candidates for the position of the Chief Economist of Pakistan. However, I became much better aware of his thoughts when he was appointed as an Advisor to Prime Minister Imran Khan in 2018 having a task to give recommendations on institutional/civil service reforms and austerity in Pakistan. He conducted several formal meetings, and I duly availed the opportunity to go through the proceedings of those meetings, informally, as I was personally interested in the subject. Pertinently, a representative of Planning Division was an ex-officio member of the committee formed to discuss the subject restructuring of the civil service.   

Those were the days when Dr. Ishrat Hussain launched his book in Pakistan, “Governing the Ungovernable”. I was present at the launch ceremony of the book, in Islamabad, and bought a copy primarily because the title fascinated me. Truly speaking, by that time I had personally concluded that Pakistan was an ungovernable state and wished to affirm that Dr. Ishrat Hussain also believed that all the ills and miseries Pakistan had been facing were borne out of the overall incompetence and total disregard to merit in Pakistan Civil Service.

Since positive criticism also means highlighting what a reader or a listener considers shortcomings and weaknesses, side by side the brilliant aspects of a work, unfortunately, I found that the learned author restrained himself from completely exposing the ugly face of the service, as such. For example, Ishrat Sahab never talked about the blatant manipulations, dishonesties, incompetency and opportunism of bureaucrats who used to take false pride in calling themselves “the steel frame of the country” following the footsteps of Indian Civil Service of British India.

While delivering talks Dr. Ishrat Hussain frequently talks about bad political decisions and detrimental economic plannings, subsequent to the early decades of economic boom. He rightly blames Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto for one of the biggest blunders of Pakistan’s history which was the nationalization of all the industrial and commercial enterprises in 1972 but does not point out the real beneficiaries of this manipulative administrative move! Subsequent to the nationalization of private enterprises the bureaucracy of Pakistan, with their myopic vision and insatiable greed for power and authority, lecherously grabbed these prospering commercial empires and started running them as their personal kingdoms. Most of those civil servants were completely inept and mediocre minded when it came to the basic requirement to hire meritorious and competent manpower to maximize the productivity. An age of public sector corporations appeared in Pakistan and simultaneously waves of political and nepotistic recruitments of incompetent and non-productive workers and laborers started to cause immense losses to all the industries and corporations. The chief executive officers of these businesses, who were in fact the pampered and rotten civil servants, failed to observe any rationale and maintain any balance while increasing the non-developmental expenses like setting up luxurious offices, procuring fleets of new cars and making unnecessary foreign tours on public expense.

Having given a fair criticism above, still holding a faith in the capability of Ishrat Hussain to tell many truths about the actual malaise of this poor country I watched several of his interviews, presentations, webinars, talks and lectures on the civil service of Pakistan, which were available on internet. They included series of his interviews and webinars organized by Dr. Nadeem-ul-Haque, former vice chancellor of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad, as well as by Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, and the talks he delivered at Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, Asia Society, Texas, and at different TV channels and media platforms like Nukta of the journalist, Kamran Khan.  

What’s positively pivotal in his recommendatory work was that he questioned the flawed practice of running all the ministries and the departments of governments by the generalists instead of employing technocrats and specialists. Similarly, the shrewd move to further legalize and justify the hegemony and monopoly of one occupational group of the bureaucracy – by renaming of District Management Group (DMG) to Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) – also did not escape his attention. He asked for the reversal of this malicious change in the nomenclature.

The strengthening of provincial service structure and relying on provincial occupational groups to administer the respective governments of all four provinces have been favored by all those who believe in the decentralization of resources and authority. Dr. Ishrat Hussain rightly advocated for replacing federal service officers with provincial service bureaucrats. The top positions like the Chief Secretary and the Inspector General of Police in every province should come from the provincial service of the respective provinces. Relying on provincial officers for running the affairs of the province is itself the most successful way of capacity and confidence building. The departmental secretaries in a province must be answerable to the people of the province instead of taking orders from Islamabad or Rawalpindi!  

Dr. Ishrat Hussain has now turned 84 and has quit his professional and academic responsibilities. But still I believe that he must reconnect himself to his previous works on Pakistan civil service for the sake of not only pursuing his recommendatory goals but more importantly to review as well as add on new realities in the light of changing environment and perspectives – as emerged recently. For instance, the hybridization of governance in Pakistan after engaging the military officers who are passed out from Pakistan Military Academy in decision making processes at higher levels of administrative echelons. Although personally I have been against the induction of military officers in the civil service even at the initial level – as being practiced since the days of General Zia-ul-Haque, the President of Pakistan (1977 – 1988) – but going realistic and practical its generally believed that this hybrid model of governance can avert the continuity of unofficial martial law like situations and may take care of unauthorized interferences by the armed forces in the administrative setup of the country. This is also pertinent to mention here that it was in the year 2014 that during a presentation on Civil Service Reforms at National Defense University, Islamabad, I vehemently opposed the entry of army officers into the civil service of Pakistan and was appalled by the strong reaction from the senior commanders of the armed forces! It revealed the mood of the army officers who were not ready to forgo civilian authority and had been more interested in power sharing in the field of public administration than their careers as military strategists and soldiers.

Howsoever, the aspect which requires intensive and serious indulgence is the essential withdrawal of immense authority and power from mediocre civil servants who enter into the power corridors of the government not to serve the public but to enjoy the perks, authority and luxuries of the office, at the cost of public exchequer. These mediocre minded youth – mostly hailing from the middle class of the society – remain obsessed and intoxicated with the liquor of unbridled authority throughout their careers. When they climb the ladder of hierarchy their decision making is mostly despotic, arbitrary and aimed at pleasing either senior bureaucrats or their political heads. This mindset of sycophancy and incompetence has ruined the role and the structure of civil service, completely.  Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan (1973 – 1977), tried to break this nexus by introducing different specialized occupational groups into the Central Superior Services of Pakistan – who could head different ministries and divisions of the federal government as per their specialized skills and trainings – but couldn’t loosen the opportunistic hold and grip on the government structure!

Dr. Ishrat has been in favor of replacing career bureaucrats with professional technocrats. Secondly, he also believes in downsizing not only the bureaucratic positions but also the posts of supporting staff drastically. This healthy approach needs to be encouraged although it has always called extreme resistance from the vested interest. Why are financial and commercial ministries headed by generalists and not by professional financial managers as federal secretaries? Similarly, information, telecommunication, planning, defense, education, culture, agriculture, food and all other specialized ministries and departments need to be headed by technocrats and specialists, in the federal as well as the provincial governments. Until and unless this professional approach is not adopted poor decisions, faulty proposals and senseless judgments shall keep on casting dark shadows on the already tarnished image of governance in Pakistan.

At the end it is necessary to record the reason for singling out Dr. Ishrat Hussain, an octogenarian economist, to once again lead the crucial study and then to reformulate revised recommendations – in the light of changing realties and arising circumstances, in present times. When we talk of reformulating recommendations one must understand that he decided to disassociate himself due to the apathy and unwillingness of the governments of General Pervez Musharraf and Imran Khan to implement and enforce the proposed reforms. Both times the recommendations were shelved.

Dr. Ishrat Hussain may be the best choice not only because of his previous knowledge of the subject and working stamina, which is necessary to conduct the research, but mainly for the reason that the gentleman cannot be influenced and cajoled at any cost. In fact, he has already enjoyed high positions of influence internationally, besides having no greed for any worldly gifts at this advanced age of 84 years. Any senior bureaucrat may not dare to bully or dictate to him as he is himself one of the senior most retired CSP officer of 1964 batch.