By Asrar
In Dera Bugti, a mother waits, for an ambulance which may get late or may never come. In Upper Kohistan, a student has to walk about 15 kilometres to reach a high school. In Rajanpur, a farmer has no nearby access to irrigation officials to properly look after his crops. These are not layman stories but the real-world examples of governance structure that is distant from citizensreach to be served well. When government is too far, it might become non-existent for the citizens.
The governance debate of Pakistan has resurfaced with an immediate requirement of rethinking over existing administrative structure. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi declared that the existing governance system has “collapsed” and is not capable enough to address the issues being faced by the country. He called for a national consensus on administrative reforms, including the creation of newadministrative units or number of smaller provinces.
During a press briefing, DG ISPR Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry stated that if good governance requires an administrative reset, it should be done that way, but in accordance with the constitutional and legal means; and will of the people may also be prioritised.
The real issue of this governance debate does not seem to be about the number of provinces Pakistan should have rather it seems to be whether the state can address structural governance failures that has weaken its democratic stability, economic progress, and institutional performance. Administrative boundaries can matter only because they influence how quickly citizens may receive education, healthcare, justice, and disaster relief. If governance remains distant then drawing of new maps or adding new provinces may not improve lives of the people.
Pakistan’s existing administrative structure was designed for a much smaller population but thecensus of 2023 showed,it has nearly 242 million people(about250 million now) making it the world’s fifth most populous nation. Yet the federation still operates with only four provinces, from the time of independence.Contrary to that, India has 1.4 billion people and has created 28 states for better governance. By that measure Pakistani provinces serves roughly 60 million people, which is a huge figure. Punjab alone has nearly 128 million people more than the population of Japan. Sindh has over 55 million, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over 40 million, while Balochistan covers 44 percent of Pakistan’s landmass but has fewer than 15 million residents who are scattered across Asia’s diverse and challenging terrains. These disparities are not administrative imbalance rather they are a structural governance failure, which calls for rethinking.Local provincial governments manage larger populationsthan many sovereign states, which places an undue pressure and challenges quality of life, education, healthcare, and overall infrastructure of institutions. Oversized administrative units definitely increase the distance between citizens and respective local government, which becomes difficult for remote regions to have better administrative attention than provincial capitals.
The 18th Constitutional Amendment was an important step toward decentralisation by restoring parliamentary supremacy and by strengthening provincial autonomy. While substantial powers moved from the federal government to the provinces yet devolution largely stopped there. Local provincial governments remained reluctant to transfer meaningful authority to elected local institutions. The World Bank estimates for general government spending by local governments accounted for only 4.7 percentin 2024 which is less than previous estimates of 10 percent in 2005. Therefore, it can be considered that Pakistan is not under-provincialized rather it is under-decentralised.
Article 140A of the Constitution requires provinces to establish elected local governments which is not implemented evenly by the successive governments. Syed Mohammad Ali observed that, “Pakistan has spent almost decades over the debateof making the government more responsive to citizens but the most important aspectsremained mainly neglected, that is the local government”.A recent report by the Global Think Tank Network offers a sobering counterpoint: “The pathology lies not in provincial boundaries, but in the absence of effective governance”.
International experience of restructuring shows that India has created new states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, and Telangana, to improve governance in neglected regions, which improved economy of Uttarakhand over 20 times in 23 years, demonstrating that smaller states can focus more closely on local priorities. Indonesia has launched one of the world’s largest decentralisation programmes after 1998, increasing number of districts from 302 to 514. Nigeria, on the other hand, demonstrates the risks of expanding administrative units without fiscal sustainability, where despite of receiving billions in allocations, local government resources have been absorbed by state executive interference, frustrating decentralisation efforts.
Creating new provinces in Pakistan is neither simple nor inexpensive but a deliberate process requiring proper planning and execution to cater for reform risks. Additional newprovinces will requirenew legislatures, secretariats, judicial institutions, and sustainable finances. The fiscal reality of provinces is sobering: provincial own-source tax revenue hovers around only 1 percent of GDP, while more than 80 percent of consolidated provincial expenditure is recurrent. A created new province being poor financially could acquire government institutions faster than it may acquire a productive tax base.
The ethnic dimension of Pakistan is also an important factor to be considered. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has opposed the debate of dividing Sindh into new provinces, and stated that the future of province lies solely with the elected members of the Sindh Assembly. This resistance is not some hostility toward reformsbut there is a distinction between dividing Sindh and decentralising Sindh.
Pakistan must first consider whether its governance issues come from the size of provinces or from the concentration of power within them. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi stressed that “no improvement can be achieved without the rule of law, even if 1,000 administrative units or provinces are created”. Dr Aneel Salman asks: “What will the new province produce? What can it tax? How much will its government cost?”
To answer these questions and to addressing these issues of governance, the federal government should establish an independent commission on administrative reforms comprising constitutional experts, economists, and representatives from all provinces, to develop objective national criteria for restructuring.The future of Pakistandepends mainly on effective governance but not on constitutional symbolism. The debate over creation of new provinces and establishment of local governments should be complementary but not competing, it is not about drawing new lines on a map rather it is about redesigning governance for the twenty-first century. As Tahsin Shah observed that “A federation’s true strength is measured not by the number of provinces on its map, but by the confidence of its citizens that their government is never too distant to serve them”.
The question arises here is not whether to reform but whether to act. Pakistan’s population has overgrown well beyond the administrative boundaries. Government institutions have not kept pace with the demographics which calls for a rethinking and redesigning the existing governance structure for the betterment of the nation and the country as a whole. Hence, with a population of nearly 250 million, reforms are essential.When a child in Gwadar can access the same quality of education as a child in Lahore; when a mother in Dera Bugti can reach emergency care within shortest possible time; when a farmer in Rajanpur can obtain a land title with better crops production without traveling to a distant capital, then it can be considered that new administrative reforms have truly worked out.The path forward can be concluded on two complementary objectives: by creating new provinces where there is broad consensus, administrative necessity, and economic viability; and by strengthening local governments under Article 140A to ensure power and resources actually reach citizens at the grassroots level.
