Discussion of New Provinces in Pakistan

For the past few days, the media has been abuzz with various discussions and analyses regarding increasing the number of provinces in Pakistan. It is being said that creating new provinces is necessary because the current political and administrative system does not have a solution to Pakistan’s crisis. It seems that these discussions are not the product of any natural process because those participating in this discussion seem to represent specific interests, while major political parties of Pakistan, including the PPP and the PML-N, have opposed the creation of new provinces. These discussions do not mention how much financial crisis the new provinces will bring with them, the burden of which will have to be borne by the taxpayers in the form of new provincial assemblies, governors, chief ministers, cabinets, high courts, public service commissions and civil secretariats.

It should be remembered that as soon as Pakistan was formed, state intellectuals started using slogans including Muslim nation, ideology of Pakistan and strong center as weapons to deny the existence of units that had existed in the country for thousands of years. Former Law Minister A.K. Brohi had presented the theory in a long article in the daily Dawn that there is no concept called "nationhood" in social sciences and that Pakistan is a unitary state as a successor state of the British Empire of India, not a federal charter. The center has formed the provinces, not the provinces, the federation. By which he wanted to prove that the center was established first and the provinces later. But in his article, he did not mention that different nations have been living in Pakistan for five thousand years with their own languages, cultural features, traditions and customs, while Pakistan had only been formed a few years ago. It is important to mention here that nationality is not only a socio-political concept but also a living reality which cannot be taken to mean separatism.

According to Brohi, the rights of nations also include the right to self-determination which would uproot the foundations of the country. But in this regard, we have the example of Switzerland where German, French and Italian nations are enjoying all the rights of nationality in a single state and they have no desire to form separate nation-states. If we look at it historically, the formation of provinces and their rights in this region were not administratively determined because it involved mandatory nationality, otherwise the North-West Frontier Province would not have been separated from Punjab, nor would Sindh’s demand to be separated from Bombay have been accepted. For this reason, the 1935 Act also proposed a federal structure and the 1940 Pakistan Resolution also demanded the establishment of independent states in the northwestern (present-day Pakistan) and eastern regions of India, in which each region would have the status of an independent and sovereign state.

Along with this, it has been seen historically that for the unity, stability and prosperity of any country, it is necessary that a single nation gradually evolves there. Pakistan cannot become a single nation until a federation is formed on the basis of mutual consent, sharing of benefits and harms and harmony of its natural and essential components, namely the Punjabi, Sindhi, Pakhtun, Saraiki and Baloch nations. Our political leaders should realize that the issue of nationality is nothing separate from the issue of democracy in Pakistan. Today, the urgent need of the hour is that we should talk about a strong Pakistan instead of a strong center and in the name of a strong center, we should reject the economic, social, historical and political values ​​of the units, otherwise you will have a strong center but perhaps not a strong Pakistan. The separation of East Pakistan was the precursor to these injustices.

Thanks to the Eighteenth Amendment, for the first time, the Pakistani state has truly taken the form of a federal and welfare state because the aim of this amendment is to make Pakistan a nation that is the guarantor of its unity, stability and prosperity. It should be remembered that in the history of nations, such agreements acquire the status of sanctity which are not tampered with. Today, the current political crisis of Pakistan, the solution of which was said to lie in the creation of new provinces is, in fact, associated with the transfer of central and provincial powers to the lower level. In accordance with the spirit of Article 32 of the Constitution, it is necessary to implement local governments and in accordance with the spirit of Article 140(a), financial, administrative and political powers should be transferred to these institutions.

Political influence on the civil service and the police should be completely eliminated. In democratic societies, the journey of the people from birth to death is managed at the local level and at the same time, local governments can provide the initial nursery for our politics and develop the leadership of the working class, which will build a relationship between the state and the people. It should be remembered that in today's Europe, the leadership of any political party is not hereditary but reaches the center through local governments. Thus, it becomes a driver of social change by being aware of all the problems of the common man.

Fiscal sustainability is an issue that is perhaps most frequently ignored in the discussion of carving out new provinces, but is a critical issue: despite any redrawing of administrative boundaries, most existing provinces are finding it difficult to increase local revenues, particularly by property or agricultural taxes, relying extensively on transfers by the federal government. This institutional deficiency implies that unless any new-created provinces also have strong revenue-generating mechanisms and fiscal independence, the prospect of superior governance could be just as elusive, and new provincial arrangements would become more burdens than centers of efficient local government.