By Ahmad Jawad

CAUTION: Some good people had always existed in bureaucracy, they still do exist and they will continue to exist in a very small minority but either they are toothless or meaningless or pushed into corners.

Bureaucracy is like “Lords of the Ring”. Civil Servants are actually Lords. Ring is a cartel of power, corruption, addiction of authority and incompetence.

Who are the real lords of this country? Those who are given the feel of supremacy starting from the selection and through training and later when they are sent to rule the public. The ruling style of bureaucracy is borrowed from the British rule and unfortunately it is continued even today.

Our bureaucracy is mother of entire status quo and it grooms, preserves and nurtures element of status quo. Bureaucracy finds its comfort, its power and control within status quo. Judiciary, politicians, public sector, private sector and even military remains under the influence of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is mostly obedient, Yes Sir, glamorous, gentle, shrewd, opportunist, corrupt, experienced and exploiter. Spell of bureaucracy always set the tunes & lyrics of a government without ever earning the name of Musician or Lyricist. Bureaucracy would generously give the credit to civil and military rules for popular programs and slogans. They are not into fame, but they exploit the fame of rulers. They always leave required traces for any future accountability of politicians and military rulers. Yet they get caught rarely, even if they are caught, entire system of bureaucracy will attempt to create gaps in the investigation, so it’s not easy to successfully prosecute a bureaucrat.

Lords are deeply connected into a ring for mutual comfort & benefits. They only survive & grow with the strength of ring.

Beauty of bureaucracy is that they have destroyed every department they serve, from Police to District Managment to Customs to Accounts to Information to Excise to Cantonments to FBR to Foreign office to Planning to Economy to Administration and every department, they ever stepped in.

If we have to single out one community who damaged Pakistan most, it’s not politician, military or Judiciary, it’s bureaucracy. They always had power and they always used power either to comfort their ego or to gain personal benefit or to help the agenda of rulers. Politicians fight with each other, politicians fight with judiciary, politicians fight with military and it applies to Military as well. In this continuous war of Military, Politician and Judiciary, Lords of the Ring would stay afloat and would assist politicians and Military to fight with each other.

Recent incident of a grade 20 bureaucrat picking wallet of a Kuwaiti delegation is just tip of ice berg. Ahad Cheema and Fawad Hasan Fawad are just the chosen ones under accountability to wash the sins of entire civil services. There will always be a Tariq Aziz or Fawad Hasan Fawad to run “Lords of the Ring”, only names change, strategy remains same.

Lords of The Ring will lead the way of a military dictator, they will lead the way of one political party or other. On one hand, they will just change dates of their revolutionary ideas to present them to every new ruler and show their commitment, on the other hand, they will not let those revolutionary ideas ever to pass through. They have scripts of various reforms in the system of every department which they will keep presenting to every ruler eager to bring changes. Each reform script carries its own bugs not to allow any such reform agenda ever to succeed.

During the day, they play with the government representatives which includes inexperienced ministers and new appointees of various departments, at night they share their notes, laugh at rulers, ridicule Ministers, leak information to Media and predict failure of government well in advance.

They are masters of the game, They know the rules, they know how to break them, they know how to bypass them, they know how to create deadlocks. They never allow governments to play the game without their rules.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

Announce and introduce a new civil services system. A service which will not be inducted through Public Service Commission or any current government recruitment channels. A new induction commission is to be created by mix of professionals from all fields including overseas Pakistanis. New induction Commission may invite applications from professionals below 45 years to join the new service. These new inductees will be young professional of IT, Telecom, science, medical, engineering, architecture, law, industry, education, media, Social Media and from all segments of society to allow a mix of every profession and segment of society. Their induction process should be made transparent as far as possible.

Get them one month training from each of these institutions like Pakistan Military Academy, Civil Staff Courses, NDU, LUMS/IBA.

Hire this new breed of professionals on one year contract with one month firing notice, renewal of their contract should be based on accomplishment of given targets. Targets should be tangible to help transparent evaluation of targets Vs performance.

Keep high salaries of these professionals at par with corporate sector.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH EXISTING BUREAUCRACY?

FIRE THEM AND TELL THEM TO APPLY UNDER NEW PROCEDURE.

THIS COUNTRY WILL FLOURISH LIKE NEVER BEFORE.

I cannot guide how such new system can be adopted constitutionally but “ There is a will, There is a way”.

WE TRIED TO RUN THIS COUNTRY WITH BUREAUCRACY FOR 71 YEARS, LETS EXPERIMENT THIS COUNTRY WITHOUT BUREAUCRACY FOR JUST ONE YEAR