Creating More Provinces Is Not the Cure

Summary

• Addressing Pakistan’s governance challenges requires strengthening institutions rather than focusing solely on administrative boundaries.
• Proponents of creating more provinces often cite it as evidence that smaller administrative units improve governance.
• If the genuine intention behind proposing new administrative units is to devolve power and bring governance closer to the public, that can easily be accomplished through ordinary statutory legislation rather than reopening constitutional disputes.

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By Nabeel Badr

The writer is pursuing an MBA from the University of Hertfordshire and holds a BBA degree in Business Management from the University of Plymouth, UK. He completed his intermediate education at Forman Christian College, Lahore. He is currently based in the United Kingdom.

The Interior Minister’s public admission that Pakistan’s existing governance system has completely collapsed is difficult to dispute. But acknowledging failure is easy; the immediate question is one of accountability—those in power must ask themselves who brought the state to this point. This collapse is not a sudden development but the outcome of a long process of institutional decay.

Declaring that a system has failed is easy; presenting a viable alternative is far more difficult. The assertion that creating new provinces will resolve the crisis is a deeply flawed premise. Pakistan has already experienced the consequences associated with such top-down administrative restructuring. In 1958, provinces were abolished by the government to establish the One Unit scheme, an experiment that ultimately resulted in political and structural failure.