The debate over new provinces has acquired new urgency after Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi declared on July 30 that Pakistan's governance system had 'collapsed' and called for political consensus on new provinces and administrative units. The statement was followed by talk of an 'administrative reset' and reports of feelers being sent through unnamed sources. Structural change has suddenly become fashionable. But if the system has collapsed, why assume drawing new lines on the map will fix it? Pakistan's problem is not primarily that its provinces are too large. It is that power is concentrated at the wrong level, exercised by people too distant from citizens to be held accountable.
The real reform is not more provinces. It is to take power away from provincial capitals and put it where citizens can see who governs them and punish failure. The proposal is to use the existing administrative structure as the basis for a much more powerful local tier, with elected leadership and responsibility for education, healthcare, policing, sanitation, local transport and infrastructure. This will not lead to a dramatic change, but it would be a step in the right direction. The distinction is fundamental. A new province creates another political centre. Devolution changes who actually runs government.
Pakistan already has four provincial governments with substantial constitutional powers and access to a large share of national revenues. The 18th Amendment and the 7th NFC Award were important steps towards fiscal federalism, transferring major responsibilities and resources to the provinces. But decentralisation effectively stopped at the provincial capitals. Power moved from Islamabad to Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta without moving far enough down to cities, districts, tehsils and local communities. The result is a peculiar absurdity: the state has decentralised upwards while remaining centralised downwards.
Provincial governments have acquired substantial responsibilities and resources, while local governments remain institutionally weak, financially dependent and vulnerable to political interference. Citizens do not experience the state through constitutional schedules or NFC formulas. They experience it through roads, schools, hospitals, water, sanitation and policing. These are largely local matters, yet responsibility is deliberately blurred. Members of parliament are expected to arrange local development, provincial ministers intervene, bureaucrats control decisions, and local representatives depend on provincial governments for money. This is not democratic accountability.
It is patronage dressed up as government. Pakistan should therefore empower administrative divisions rather than create new provinces. A division is potentially large enough to provide administrative capacity but close enough to citizens to make political accountability meaningful. It should become a genuine unit of government rather than remain an administrative layer of the provincial bureaucracy. An elected mayor or equivalent executive should be responsible for functions devolved to the division. Local governments should have clearly defined responsibilities, predictable transfers and their own revenue sources. Provincial governments should not be able to starve them of funds or dismiss elected representatives at will. Most importantly, responsibility and resources must move together.