Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s remarks about the need to reform the governance structure have triggered a heated debate about the need for new administrative units.While it can be argued that the creation of new provinces can lead to greater public participation, achieving national consensus on the proposal will be a daunting challenge. The change will require a constitutional amendment, no less. If accomplished, it will forever reshape the political landscape. Article 239(4) of the Constitution of Pakistan lays down that redrawing the boundary of a province cannot be undertaken unless the concerned Provincial Assembly passes a statutory amendment bill with at least two-thirds of its total membership voting in favour.

Pakistan has already experimented with One Unit - merging the entire (then) West Pakistan into a single administrative unit between 1955 and 1970. The move was vehemently opposed and criticised by the nationalist parties of the NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Balochistan and Sindh.

The last local government elections in the Punjab were held in 2015. This has further weakened the already fragile local government institutions and aggravated the governance challenges. Given that the projected benefits of the Amendment have not materialised, it can be argued that there is a need to look for another alternative governing structure that may be more effective and efficient in terms of delivering civic services to the people. There is a view that this can be achieved by dividing the provinces into smaller units to make the governments more responsive to the local conditions. This is hoped to cure the concentration of powers and empower people at the grassroots level. German-born British statistician and economist, EF Schumacher, famously asserted that “to be able to act effectively and intelligently, man requires a small unit.“ He argued that large structures not only breed alienation and inefficiency but also cause communities to lose their local identity.

Long before political theorists expounded the role of power devolution and concentration of power in regulating public affairs, poets, dramatists and novelists understood the value of a decentralised authority as a social catalyst. The fundamentals of good governance principles abound in literary classics. In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Isabella, standing before Lord Angelo, pleads for mercy to save her brother Claudio’s life. She says: “O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant”. In Troilus and Cressida, Hector (the Prince of Troy) argues before the war council the need to return Helen to Sparta owing to the regulation of chaotic desires by humanitarian and moral laws. He says, “There is a law in each well-ordered nation to curb those raging appetites.” References to small administrative units such as parishes, boroughs and rural entities or districts abound in literary works. These can be interpreted as microcosms of human nature and tradition.

The 18th Amendment, passed in 2010, was seen as a significant step toward empowering the provinces to establish their local government system. However, the provincial governments have barely allowed the local bodies to function. 

Authors like Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and George Orwell have shown how hyper-real entities have been instrumental in shaping an oppressed community’s collective identity in the wake of centralised establishment of power. In Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree, the code, “Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed,“ is mean to underscore how unrestrained exercise of power can lead a human society to chaos. The distribution of power among smaller groups may be seen as a catalyst for more balanced power structures. Pakistan needs a similar strategy. Major political leaders as well intellectuals have all spoken of the inefficacy of the current with it large and unwieldy provinces. Provincial governments have struggled to deliver the services consistently and uplift the society’s marginalised and under-represented segments. More administrative units could mean more accountability and more connectedness between the rulers and the ruled. Consolidated power structures in the context of Pakistan can be equated with what goes on in George Orwell’s analysis of the managerial class in his magnum opus, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the society’s exploitation is ascribed to “the barren world of monopoly industry and centralised government,“ that renders the aristocracy of bureaucrats hungrier for more power.

If governance is a system of rules that defines how to direct and manage an organisation or a country, and if the United Nations’ core principles such as accountability, transparency and the rule of law are essential for running a country in a just manner, it can be contended that as long as Pakistan continues to have large provinces, good governance that ensures ethical and effective management of public affairs and resources will be found in books alone. In Little Dorrit, Dickens mocked the “Circumlocution Office” as a symbol of government and bureaucratic machinery dedicated solely to doing nothing. Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle, two characters in his Bleak House, likewise, are concerned more with sustaining their power than the public good. This may be a reference to perceived parliamentary inaction in addressing issues of public interest.

In our context, a highly centralised bureaucracy and governance structure are reminiscent of colonialism. No wonder the heartless legal and administrative systems pay no heed to the welfare of ordinary people. Actual decentralisation of power may prove the first concrete step towards a prosperous federation. Too large a province symbolises the inhibition of its representatives to act for the well-being of their constituents and their failure to uplift their living standards. Great works of literature – like those mentioned above invite us to rethink and reorient power structures.

The writer is the head of the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Lahore.