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Articles |
FOOD FOR THOUGHT...Bureaucracy's
highly questionable role
BY : DR ZAFAR ALTAF
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ARTICLE (March 06 2010): As I reflect on the last forty years of public
service, I am grateful for the years spent in the service of the people of
Pakistan. I have done my best at trying to resist temptations of pleasures
and have taken the painful route sometimes at great cost personally.
Of late, I was considering the greatness of some of my colleagues and the
pettiness of the majority of them. The bureaucracy revels in creating chasms
within the society and between power blocks - that can be between
politicians [who really are not that category but politicians], between
politicians and themselves, between themselves and the general public. In
short, I may be forgiven if I state the obvious and miss out some of the
groups.
By no mean standards do I not consider the industrialists, the MNCs, the
vested groups, the waderas, the feudals and any group that hopes to gain
from the fight of minions [not titans] for I do not consider them anything
but in the disservice of Pakistan and, therefore, despicable characters. The
legacy of divide and rule lives on and it is in this context that the
colonial rule has to be considered as one of the most regressive ones.
For, they disturbed the social context and disturbed the rhythm of the
country, thus ensuring that a different kind of imperialism would be imposed
on the countries that had sought independence from them. Blatant as they
were they made sure that the countries that gained independence had
something to fight about. These were problems that were intractable.
How did the bureaucracy fulfil their dreams is but one aspect of the
bureaucracy for it fought with decency on many fronts. For the bureaucracy,
a despot's rule is more important since all he has to do is to satisfy the
wishes of that one man, that one man shows that is there. In the most recent
past, the emergence of slavish attitude was predominantly seen and there was
a plethora of such people around that did not mind compromising their
principles [or whatever they had] for getting some benefits.
But the role that is most despicable is the ability of these bureaucrats to
lose all sense of decency and carry lies to the political system and to do
that not in the presence of the person being vilified but in his absence.
The result is that they set up individuals in a fight between the provinces
and between the individuals. The crimes committed by the staff are far more
that the crime committed by the leaders. That is true for any society but
here there is another element of corruption.
Go back to mega slaves and go back to the Ayub regime and the arrest of
Bangla Bondhu Sh. Mujib-ur-Rehman. When he was arrested during the Ayub
regime I was working as the sub-divisional magistrate in Karachi and some of
the arrested were brought before me so that I could record their statements
under Section 164 Cr. PC. There was no evidence that he was involved in this
kind of activity.
But he had emerged as a major threat to the regime of Ayub and he had to be
sorted out by him based again on the advice of the senior advisors. The case
met the fate that it should have and when it went to Dhaka (Dacca), the
court was stormed, the end of the case.
As cricketers, we used to go to the stadium for cricket matches and we
noticed one day a number of policeman guarding a bungalow, curious, as we
were the information was accessed from those guarding. The policeman did not
know but mumbled something about traitors under lock and key and it
transpired that the entire leadership of Balochistan was under house arrest
in Lahore. These were intrigues of a political nature.
Now come to recent events in which the media too has played its part. Water
is the source of dispute between all the provinces. The secretaries of
irrigation of all the provinces have intrigued so that a solution cannot be
arrived at. The KB dam is another source of conflict and I was asked to make
a presentation to the then usurper President. It was my contention that this
dam was and is not needed.
Musharraf asked the Wapda Chairman to state his case. His was a simple one
and without regards to the obtaining conditions in the country. He owed his
job to Musharraf as he was also from the uniform. After his presentation
cynically, I was told that I had made a presentation based on intangibles.
The Wapda presentation was on tangibles. General Zulfiqar was asked to make
good his presentation.
He is still doing it sitting in Okara or wherever. He went to Badin - where
the farmers took of his trousers through questioning, at Thatta he lost his
shirt and he slung home and I suppose the KB dam has been built and is
storing water. It is not required no matter what the former Chairmen of
Wapda say with whatever conviction. Go back to all the dams.
The engineers of Wapda have cheated this country for all the projects have
been so developed as to show a positive cost/benefit ratio and as a result
better internal rate of return and a better economic rate of return. Nearest
tree is where they should be taken to for the time over run and cost over
run is such that their necks should be lengthened.
With water efficiency at 27% at best why this noise about KB dam? Keep your
house in order and things would work out better. The collector used to
ensure that the Warabandi would be in order. Where is that Warabandi and
where is the equity aspect of water delivery.
Whatever little was there was taken away from the dams. Will the engineers
explain why the waters of the Mangla and Tarbela have not been allocated and
why are the canals running on provisional basis? Why were new canals dug in
Cholistan and why in Thal where lands were allotted to whom?
There is mush that the irrigation engineers have to answer for. The canals
in Cholistan are called Aab-i-Hayat, as they never run dry. In fact these
are the only canals that may have had floods in them!!. Servility and an
uncanny ability to foster dirt in the social system seem to have been the
proud heritage our future generations would remember us by.
Come nearer home and the projects launched by the previous regime and the
manner in which recruitment of relatives, caste and connected were made. The
project design on drip irrigation was faulty and there was considerable
amount of money that was being siphoned from the project evidenced by the
cost per acre that was to be paid by the government as subsidy and the
amount paid by the farmer-in that it was about 90,000 rupees for the
government and Rs 36,000 for the farmer.
I was asked to look into this and I found that the work could be done for as
little as Rs 30,000 payment by the government and the farmer had to pay as
little as Rs 5,000 per acre. So how does the equation work? Why should the
farmer pay as much as he did when the required amount was seven times less?
The came the servility factor and the intrigue by the ones affected, who
were siphoning off money from the project through one pretext or another.
Hard to believe that one province can still go ahead with a Rs 130,000 per
acre initiative as against the offer of Rs 35,000 per acre. What makes
sense? Why this nonsense that is going on? Reach for the intrigue factor. In
three years, the earlier project was to have targeted 84,000 acres and all
that these guys did was 2,154 acres. They have been blabbering fools and
they should know that lies of this kind could work only in the short-term.
The long-term belongs to the honest and the decent.
So what was the nature of other expenditures? The consultants were paid Rs
390 million as mobilisation amount? Why? The bureaucrats who belong to
elsewhere have disgusted this country and are a shame to themselves and
their families. Go back to any project where the Musharraf government threw
tainted US money at the agriculture system and got his own people recruited.
They called it recruitment by merit.
Merit inasmuch as the personal recruited belonged to the more powerful. The
recruited came from families well connected and those that had already been
parasites to the country. There is a tendency to avail of the best from
whatever sources and the bureaucrats have assumed the changing colours of
the chameleon. I sued to call them prostrate bureaucrats without any
principles and agreeing with everyone that is in power. That the
decision-making is perverted by these individuals are obvious but what is
not so obvious are the consequences of their actions.
They are thick brained and thick brained are only bothered about siphoning
off resources. Tainted money does not last. Tainted money sooner or later
stinks. Try and use your imagination and your work ethic to make money
rather than servility and prostrate behaviour; guilty as charged-you bet.
More will come your way on the misdemeanours of the bureaucracy, the saints
that they are or portray themselves to be for they have destroyed the very
back of work ethics-bendable with no spine. No guts to work out their
abilities on the basis of issues and not workable abilities. Will they
change? Requires a massive effort.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2010
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