Saving Jinnah’s Pakistan

Tvery government that has come into power in Pakistan has spoken about the need for Jinnah’s Pakistan to be restored but unfortunately no concrete steps have been taken in this direction so far.

Jinnah envisioned a Pakistan where religion would have a balanced role in politics, law-making, judicial policies and education and there would be no discrimination against minority religious communities. He wanted the state to be a democratic polity. He perceived religion as a matter of citizen’s personal beliefs and, as he said in his speech of August 11, 1947, it had nothing to do with the business of the state.

The Objectives Resolution came after the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It was proposed by the then Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on March 12, 1949 and proclaimed that Pakistan would be a federation and the federating units would be autonomous. Jinnah staunchly believed that Pakistan would not be a theocracy. In fact, the country was given the name ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ on March 23, 1956 when it became a republic.

In Jinnah’s view, all people living within the state’s boundaries were equal members of a new nation, which was being formed on the basis of common citizenship. They would have their own constitution based on a people’s democracy. He saw the foremost duty of the state as being the protection of the lives and property of all citizens and promotion of their welfare. On the international front, Pakistan would follow the principles of goodwill for all and malice towards none.

While Mr. Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be an enlightened, modern and moderate state, it is sad that none of this has happened and the country has continued to slide backwards. Today it finds itself at a crucial juncture where those on the right of centre seem to be gaining supremacy and the religious radicals or those who question the very existence of Pakistan are getting the upper hand.
Will Pakistan survive? That is the moot point. It will surely survive but only if a concrete strategy is devised to infuse the spirit of Jinnah’s thinking into the people who matter – namely civil society, academia, armed forces and the people at large.

How can this be done? To begin with, there are no easy answers and no quick-fix solutions. This is a long drawn process that must be initiated now and allowed to seep into the national ethos with sustainable results. Unfortunately, many recipes have been tried in the past but without much success.

Given his frail health, the founder of the nation did not have a chance to visualize the problems that Pakistan would face in future before he left us in September 1948, just about a year after the country’s birth. But most succeeding rulers and governments after him have dismally failed in their task of nation-building and providing a basic modicum of governance in terms of maintaining law and order or protecting the life and property of citizens.

The time has now come to turn a new leaf. To begin with, the administrative setup of the country has become obsolete as it is based on a single federal territory and four large and cumbersome provinces governed from provincial capitals. It is for this reason that there is a lack of communication between each provincial capital and the rest of the province. This distance prevents the administration from dispensing equitable justice, protection and administrative services to all citizens of the province. Experience has shown that Pakistan – a vast country spread over an area of 877, 406 square kilometers and consisting of over 240 million people cannot be administered anymore from one federal and 4 provincial capitals.

To maintain law and order more efficiently and to protect the life and property of the citizens, a viable solution could be that the country is divided into at least 20 administrative units – or States – and Pakistan be renamed as ‘United Pakistan’. Functioning as a Federation, Pakistan would be justified in giving itself a new name along the lines of the former UAR or the present UAE, UK or the USA.

The States should be demarcated strictly on administrative lines and no consideration should be given to linguistic or ethnic divisions. Each State should have its own state capital, its own Governor and Chief Minister and a State Assembly under the Constitution of Pakistan (which should be accordingly amended) supported by an administrative structure. Since the State would be smaller in terms of geographical size and total population and would be organized along administrative lines, the government machinery managed by local citizens – police, bureaucracy, etc. would be in a better position to ‘connect’ with the people in order to maintain law and order and to cater to the needs and grievances of the citizens. It will further develop new and young leadership at a relatively lower level but based on merit.

Local people would also have a greater sense of belonging to the area rather than those who are transferred from other provinces and thus have more love for the distant area they come from. How can, for example, a bureaucrat hailing from Gujrat have an understanding of people’s problems in Pishin where he is posted?

There are many examples around the world where bigger administrative units have been broken into smaller ones to bring the provincial machinery closer to the people and make dispensation of administrative services easier and more effective.