Local Government System: Essential Smoking Gun in the Governance Structure of Pakistan

Introduction

Pakistan is a federal republic, having three levels of government, i.e. national, provincial and local. Articles 32 and 140-A of the constitution protect the local government. There are also local-government-enabling legislations and ministries in each province in charge of implementation. The district councils and the metropolitan corporations are respectively the highest rural and urban local government in the provinces. All other provinces except Khyber have two or three levels of both urban and rural local government.

There are 129 district councils in the four provinces, 619 urban councils consisting for one city district, four metropolitan corporations, thirteen municipal corporations, ninety-six municipal committees, 148 town councils, 360 urban union committees, and 1,925 rural councils. Additionally Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 3339 neighborhood, tehsil and village councils. Depending on provincial laws, capacity to increase local revenue will differ.

District councils and metropolitan corporations bear great burdens, which in many cases are shared in common with either of the two higher. provincial government and federal government – eg for police (union guards), education, medical, roads and local economic development – or with lower local government – e.g. of water and Sanitation, museums and libraries and protection of the environment.

legal framework

Local government is protected by the constitution in Articles 32 and 140-A. The legal structure of local government in Pakistan is based on Article 140-A of the 2010 eighteenth Constitutional amendment that states that each province set up local government councils and provide them with real power and money.

Text of article 140-A: “Each Province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments.” Moreover, several judicial decisions and another Article 32 of the constitution also make it mandatory to establish local government structure. article 32 states: “The State shall encourage local government institutions composed of elected representatives of the areas concerned and also such institutions for special areas as may be prescribed by law.”

There are three levels of councils in all four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, KP and Balochistan): district councils (serving a population of approximately 2 million people), tehsil/taluka councils (serving a population of approximately 300,000 people which offers basic services such as garbage collection and water), and union councils (serving a population of approximately 10,000 people where citizens directly participate in it). These councils are enumerated with a clear set of what they are expected to do which includes the management of garbage, water, roads, construction of schools and health centers, welfare programs and listening to the grievances of citizens.

The provincial government share of the national taxes (57.5%), which provinces could use to serve such local councils, is also safeguarded by the Constitution. The legal framework, however, has a significant drawback, namely, the fact that it states that provinces must create local government, but does not explain how much power to transfer, when to transfer, and what occurs in case of non-observance. On paper thus the law is fine, but it cannot enforce provinces to actually adhere to it.

Conceptual Understanding of Local Government Structure

The local government in Pakistan is a three-tier system of governance that is similar to the provincial framework in the country. These are district councils (zila), intermediate level tehsil councils and grassroots union councils. This is not a random hierarchy because each level has particular duties, which are appropriate to its level.

Districts deal with mass problems: agriculture, community development, education and health. Tehsils specialize in urban facilities such as infrastructure and facilities serving towns and environs. The nearest level to the citizen is union councils that offer community based services and respond to the local needs. The system will incorporate these levels with the bottom-up approach of planning i.e. the local input flows upwards to inform the district policy. This integration is strengthened by the electoral processes and service delivery monitoring systems.
In the absence of local elections, some district administrators can temporarily assume the running of the government, which guarantees continuity in administration in the absence of applicable democratic representation.

Authority and Oversight

The building is a manifestation of the federalism of Pakistan. Although there is some national-level coordination that is offered by a federal Ministry of Inter Provincial Coordination, provinces are the ones that command the majority of influence on local governments. The local government departments are headed by a provincial minister and provinces have considerable control of the manner in which their local systems operate and are managed.

Types of Councils

The network of the local government in Pakistan is wide and varied. There are 2,055 councils in urban areas comprising of city districts, metropolitan corporations, municipal corporations, municipal committees, town councils and union committees. secondly, there are 8,145 councils in rural areas comprising of district and union councils. There are also 56 cantonment controlled military cantonment boards which are run by the Ministry of Defence which have the Cantonment Boards which are under the Cantonments Act 1924. It is worth noting that the system of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is not similar to other provinces, and the councils there are not strictly urban or rural.

Electoral Arrangements

In 2013, Balochistan held recent local elections, and in 2015, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and cantonment areas, had recent local elections. All elections are based on the first-past-the-post system of voting, which is applied during the national elections.

Women’s Representation

Participation of women in local government is done by reservation systems, which is however not applicable in all provinces. Following the 2013 and 2015 elections, there were about 19.6 percent of all councillors who were women. Seats in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh and Sindh are allocated 33, 22, and 15 percent respectively to women. Nevertheless, the real representation is not necessarily similar to these targets.

In a 2013 election held in Balochistan, out of 2,335 women councillors only three succeeded in non-reserved seats with the rest depending on reserved ones. The 2015 cantonment board elections showed even worse differences: of 199 women only two were elected, 33 percent quota was not enacted, which can indicate that the implementation issue still remains across various electoral situations.

Historical Evolution of Local Government in Pakistan

Pre-Independence

British Rule and Colonial Backgrounds.

The local governments of present-day Pakistan were not developed out of existing village systems. Rather, they were introduced by the British on a new basis after the annexation of Sindh in 1843 and Punjab in 1849. Following the War of Independence of 1857, the British attempted to establish the supremacy of their rule by establishing representative local governments, although these were highly centralized and had very minimal powers.

The British bureaucrats nominated members instead of electing them locally and the committees were organized to serve the administrative convenience of the District Magistrate and not to serve local populations. The office of the Deputy Commissioner was the main source of centralization of real authority as the principal executive in the district level and an important centralizing agent.

The Provincialisation of Politics.

The beginning of the twentieth century was marked by a lot of changes. The World War I and the increasing nationalist tensions compelled the British to compromise politically and eventually gave the provincial government administration in the hands of the local Indian ministers in 1919. The acts known as Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935 gradually increased provincial autonomy and came up with dyarchy and later dyarchy to fully responsible provincial governments.

These gains were however limited- the imperial center continued to have ample power with reserve powers of governors and fiscal constraints. More importantly, this change in political focus between the local and provincial levels implied that the local governments were no longer relevant as a source of representation. The political energy was also centralized at the provincial and central levels where nationalist parties operated causing the local government institutions to be left out as well as lacking strong political support.

Rural and Urban Split and Patronage of the Elite.

The British had purposely established a country-city split in local governments. Urban councils were created to offer municipal services in places where British residents resided and rural councils became a tool to co-opt local landowners by limited representation. The British system, especially in Punjab, was highly patronage based in order to fix the local elites, such as land settlement policies, grants of canals colonies, and legislation against the transfer of land between agricultural and non-agricultural classes.

This fostered patron client relations between the bureaucracy and the rural landowners hence curbing political competition and maintaining the urban middle classes in the periphery. The colonial policy focused on keeping a politically quiet, submissive rural population as a source of military personnel, thus it was necessary to retain traditional hierarchies and control by landowners. The fact that the Unionist Party controlled Punjab during this time showed this calculated strategy of local government strengthening power structures that were in place and not democratizing them.

The underlying Contradiction.

The history of British local government can be characterized as a basic contradiction: the local government system was not based on the idea of independent and self-governing local institutions to be loyal to the citizens, but to represent the interests of the imperial state by forming a loyal native elite group on the side of the colonial governance. The center imposed local governments, which operated under bureaucracy and which were not truly democratically legitimate. With the development of political parties in the early twentieth century, which formed and organized themselves, the provincial and central politics sought power and the local governments were deprived of political ownership or representatives.

The local government system was excluded through decades of ignorance, by the time Pakistan became an independent state, it was shadowed by the nationalistic movement preoccupation with provincial and national politics. The outcome was that Pakistan had been left with local government systems oriented towards colonial rule, and not democratic engagement and there was no powerful political constituency interested in developing it into effective democratic institutions.

Ayoub Khan Era: Basic Democrats

When Pakistan became an independent state in 1947, it inherited poor local government institutions. The provincial and national political parties that spearheaded the independence movement lacked much attachment to the local governments and thus were still tainted by the fact that they were linked to the British colonial rule. By 1947, local governments had been established in a functional form (village panchayat and municipal councils) in only Punjab, with the majority of their members being unelected.

Whereas the independence rhetoric advocated the idea of decentralization and democratization, not much was implemented. Local bodies were never formed by election on universal adult franchise, elections were not often held and when they were they were not only poorly polluted but also ill-conducted. The bureaucracy kept a stranglehold on local institutions in the 1950s and the Muslim League, unlike the Congress Party of India, never built grassroots political organization. This enabled the civil and military bureaucracy to become more and more dominant on the political system in a decade of instability and centralization.

Ayub Coup and Local Government Revival.

In 1958, General Ayub declared martial law, dissolved national and provincial assemblies and cleansed the political system. Through the Public offices Disqualification Order and the Elective bodies Disqualification Order, about 6,000 politicians and officials were disqualified into power. Interestingly, local governments were the only level of representation of the government reinstated by Ayub at the time, similar to the British colonial model.

The new system, which was designed under the Basic Democracies Ordinance of 1959 and the Municipal Administration Ordinance of 1960, introduced a four-tier-hierarchy. Villages were base organized into Union Councils where directly elected members elected their own chairmen through adult franchise. The superior levels intertwined indirect election by members of the lower tiers with government the likes of the Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner who ensured bureaucratic control with the help of the so-called controlling power-the authority to veto resolutions, to ban actions and to force local bodies to do as he or she sees fit. Local governments were given regulatory and development roles but due to harsh fiscal policies, none of this was enacted.

Sanctioning Military Rule by Controlled Democracy.

The most important application that Ayub used of local government was political and not administrative. He associated the 80,000 Basic Democrats with his Presidential Constitution of 1962 that became the Electoral College in the election of the President and national and provincial assembly. This was a reflection of Ayubs idea of controlled democracy- stealing the colonial vision of bureaucracy through use of the idea of guardianship whereby an enlightened elite would direct the masses, and guard them against western democratic overindulgence.

Ayub felt that the rural, illiterate population of Pakistan was not fit to get the typical form of democracy and it needed a form of a representative dictatorship where people elected the elite opinion leaders. The system dispersed resources and patronage so as to establish backing to the military rule yet fell into disrepute, due to gigantic irregularities in the 1965 Presidential election against Fatima Jinnah and became strongly linked with military tyranny. In 1968-69, with popular uprisings, Basic Democrats were themselves targeted in violence, and the populace expressed their disgust at the whole system.

Urban-Rural Disparities and Growth Inequality.

Ayub preserved the British colonial model of dividing cities and rural areas of government by application of different ordinances in the two. Nevertheless, he overturned the urbanization bias which had taken root in the 1950s by focusing greater federal and provincial resources on the rural regions which were his primary political constituency. The local development projects were linked to the rural local representatives that dominated the system both in program planning and electoral significance by the larger state system. However, at the end of the 1960s, the process of urbanization and rural-urban migration resulted in the establishment of new political relations.

Urban Punjab had turned into a place of mobilization of lawyers, students, journalists, and organised labour that had acted against the regime of Ayub. On the one hand, these urban based professionals were backed by the rural middle classes to make up the constituency of the Zulfiqar Bhutto led People party which became dominant in the late 1960s. These political changes would essentially transform the conventional way in which local governments would be conceived and operated in Pakistan.

Zia-ul-Haq Era: Local Government Ordinance 1979

As General Zia ul Haq assumed power in 1977, he followed the blueprint of General Ayub since he employed the use of local governments to legitimize his power politically and centralize power at federal and provincial levels. The 1973 Constitution was suspended by martial law and the 1985 Eighth Amendment decreed indirect military rule by a quasi-Presidential system. Zia restored local government with new Local Government Ordinances in 1979-1980 and elections were held in 4 provincial administrations. Similar to Ayub, he also wanted to establish a rival faction of local politics who were dependent on the military regime by a divide and rule political approach.

But there was not accompanied by a real decentralisation of administrative functions and financial power. The comparison between Zia ordinances and Ayub Basic Democracies Ordinance shows the slight differences between what local governments were capable of doing or controlling. They were constitutionally unguaranteed and at the mercy of provincial fancies, and the powers of suspension were in the well-established hands of the provinces.

The main Reforms: Non-Party Politics and Direct Election.

The only one major change which was brought about by Zia was that following the previous populist thoughts of Bhutto, he stipulated that the entire cadre of local government members and chairmen, at all levels, should be directly elected by adult franchise. This was a tremendous departure of the Ayub system that consisted of both elected and appointed members. Greater autonomy theoretically was awarded to elected representatives, in reaction to the mass-based politics which had been developed since the 1960s and 1970s.

However, this democratic move was grossly disfigured by the insistence of Zia that local elections were non-party. Despite the fact that non-party elections were a norm since the colonial era, it was a planned turnaround considering that since 1970 national elections were dominated by political parties. Zia upheld this principle so as to counteract party voices at the local level and in 1979; he disqualified several candidates associated with PPP. These actions led to the localization and personalization of politics, whereby political contests concerned personalities, and localized networks, as opposed to ideology or party agendas.

The Urban Rural Divide and Revenue Inequality.

Zia continued the British and Ayub tradition of separating the urban and rural governance by various ordinances. More importantly, he eliminated the rural-urban coordination role of district councils, which now had the responsibility of rural areas only. This timing proved crucial. With the increase in the rate of urbanization, flow of rural goods in the cities, the rise in the octroi and urban immovable property tax revenues proved to be an advantage to the urban local councils. But Zia did not allow urban councils to distribute such benefits to the rural hinterlands.

The consequences of this asymmetry were political in nature. Urban middle classes – the very backbone of anti-Bhutto supporters that Zia backed – were able to seize their increased city revenues to help create patronage networks at the local level. Rural councils were starved of sources of revenue and relied on provincial transfers, and did not even have the capacity to perform basic functions. The revenue gap resulted in unequal spending that was highly concentrated in the urban regions. These moves formed urban-based political parties such as MQM in Sindh and the opposition led by Nawaz Sharif of the Muslim league in Punjab who had come to front in the Zia era and after.

The Post-1985 Era: Localization, Personalization and Tension.

The hegemony of the local body politicians carried into the provincial and national levels the local-level political culture as elected federal and provincial governments came back in 1985. The idea of personalizing patronage was first experienced by non-party assemblies as development funds were used by individual ministers to secure personal electoral success. This personalization also continued after party-based governments came back in 1988, because of poor party organizations- a Bhutto and Zia legacy of restriction. There was continuous change of parties by candidates and ministers implying that they were not based on ideological lines.

Most importantly, a lack of political connections between levels resulted in devastating frictions. The provincial and the federal politicians considered the local governments as competing patronage regions instead of as subordinate partners. This was aggravated by federal intrusion upon provincial roles which produced absence of political ownership at the provincial level. Federal and provincial politicians reacted by creating discretionary special development programs, which provided them with unaudited authority over local development allocations by bypassing local bodies altogether.

The consequences of this tension were terrible. The federal and provincial levels accumulated the majority of buoyant revenues, limiting local government finances. Service delivery was gradually being monopolized by provinces and most so after 1990. Most dramatically, local governments were suspended between 1993 and 1998, the irony being that the democratic provincial forces aimed to diminish the role of the local government. The military position was downgraded unlike in the past though the bureaucracy was also undermined through the 1973 Civil Service Reforms by Bhutto that removed the exclusivity of the highly elite CSP cadres.

Centralization Persists

Centralization was not reversed with the reemergence of party-based governments in 1988. Absence of single-party control at both national and provincial levels encouraged central control, as did concerns to overturn military influence under the Eighth Amendment. The presidential dissolution powers reduced the political time horizons, which provided additional incentives to centralize the budgets. Thus, real distribution of federal functions were far less than what was intended by the legislature, and expenditure functions were not being decentralized as stipulated by the law.

Musharraf Devolution Plan: Structural, Administrative and Financial framework

In January 2000, General Pervaiz Musharraf introduced the plan of Devolution of Power, which introduced a local government election in August 2001. It was the decentralization reform that Pakistan had ever tried to undertake and essentially changed the way the local government operated. In contrast to the past reforms, devolution not only changed the level at which decisions were made, but also the individuals who made decisions, their accountable bodies, and the amount of money at their disposal.

The reform did not go through all the departments evenly. The services were devolved to local governments completely, partially and critical services such as police and irrigation were left provincial. This was implemented when there were no provincial or federal elected governments and the military was in control, so even during the period of implementation of the system the system was constantly evolving.

Key Changes in Structure

The greatest change was the establishment of a new elected district government with an elected mayor at the helm (Nazim). Beneath this were Tehsil councils and Union councils forming three elected levels. Most importantly, the District Coordination Officer (DCO) who was the head of administration now was answerable to the elected Nazim as opposed to the provincial bureaucracy. This was ground breaking: it was the first time that district administration was accountable to elected officials rather than to the unelected provincial officials.

The divisional level was entirely eliminated, and a bureaucratic level was removed. In past, a majority of state services were offered through provincial departments at the district level. These services were now the mandate of elected local governments that greatly increased their obligations. Union councils were left as the lowest with members and chairman directly elected. Two-thirds of the members of the higher tiers (Tehsil and District) were elected as union-level officials, the remaining third being indirectly elected by union councilors.

Limited Financial Power

Financial decentralization was modest even though the responsibilities were expanded. The district governments were still unable to raise new taxes -they had to rely on provincial grants issued by Provincial Finance Commission awards. Much of district budgets was tied up in fixed “establishment charges” (employee salaries) beyond local control, imposed on the province. The provincial government exercised dominance over majority of revenue sources, such that the local governments were still financially reliant on the upper levels.

The power of the federal was never devolved, and the military still held all federal power. It was only provincial powers which descended to districts.

Electoral Changes

Adult franchise was also a democratic change now that all the members of the local government and heads are directly elected. Nevertheless, there was no party organizing, as elections were not party. The representation of women improved significantly to one-third of all seats which was a big leap compared to the former 5-10 percent reservations. Reserved seats also provided the rural representation with new eminence as peasants enjoyed one-third reserved seats.

The District Nazim did not require a popular majority–this time it required the majority of the votes of union councilors. This implied that one was allowed to become a mayor without necessarily getting the highest number of votes among the masses, which was restrictive to direct democracy.

The Urban-Rural Integration

One of the most crucial transformations was the removal of the urban/rural administrative gap that was present since colonial periods. Tehsil now became one government with both urban and rural areas governed by one government as opposed to the individual councils. This implied that the revenues of the urban taxes (octroi and property taxes) would not be held in isolation but instead shared with the rural areas.

In the past, cities retained their taxes and country regions lacked. Resources now had to be shared. This also assisted the urbanizing areas such as Central Punjab in peri-urban (semi-urban) areas that were formerly considered rural and not getting the urban services. In less urban provinces such as Sindh it implied that urban centers were forced to redistribute wealth to bigger rural communities.

Constitutional Limitations

The local governments were still weak constitutionally, even after these reforms. The constitution of 1973 was not three tiers of government, but two (federal and provincial). The 17th Amendment gave a six-year constitutional protection, and then the provinces were allowed to alter local government acts. No permanence was to be guaranteed. The provincial governments retained suspension powers, i.e. elected councils could be removed by the provincial government, a threat that had been previously used by military rule in order to dominate local politicians.

The reason why Local Government is supported by Military Leaders.

It becomes evident that there is a historical trend: the military regimes implement the reforms in the local government to become legitimate without returning the real power. The military could purport the governance to be democratic by establishing elected local councils despite the centralization of federal and provincial governments. The local politicians turned into co-operative people who served the interests of the military instead of a real representative. Every military reform was accompanied by a presidential or quasi presidential constitution that enhanced military dominance-Musharraf introduced the quasi-Presidential system in his Legal Framework Order and the 17 th Amendment which ensured that the military remained strong even after the elections.

The Issue: Local and Provincial Conflict.

A glaring weakness arose right away; there was no provision of co-ordination between the newly elected local governments and provincial governments to be elected later. The two levels existed in separate political worlds, as local elections that occurred first were not party-based, whereas provincial ones did occur later, and were party-based. The provincial politicians had perceived local government as robbery of their resources and power in the form of patronage. Local government was in fact resisted by political parties, which then suspended them.

This was a basic contradiction. The local governments were given duties and money and the provincial representatives were deprived of power and resources without any benefits being given to them at the federal level. At provincial level, provincial politicians, many of whom had risen through local elections, employed local-level patronage tactics, personalised politics and were not particularly interested in strengthening local institutions competing with them.

Bureaucratic Accountability Modifications.

There was a drastic change in the bureaucratic relations. Earlier, provincial secretariats were to be reported by district administrators (Deputy Commissioners). The District Coordination Officer was now reporting to the elected Nazim. Nevertheless, transfers, promotions and salaries of district officers remained under the control of the provincial government. The authority of the Nazim was still limited–actual control of men was still provincial.

This remained significant since this ensured that at least local administration was now accountable to the elected local leaders as opposed to being accountable to the provincial bureaucrats only. The district bureaucracy was undermined as a source of power, and was no longer the sole intermediary between the state and villagers.

Rural-Urban Politics

The government under Musharraf erased the rural-urban divide that was practiced by the colonial and previous regimes. This was changing demographics. The cities had spread to their parochial areas forming peri-urban spaces, or semi-urban settlements which were not technically urban and, therefore, not subject to urban taxation and urban services. These regions especially in Central Punjab were the main political regions.

The urban-rural integration at the Tehsil level was now possible through the combination of urban and rural councils enabling the peri-urban areas to receive urban services and share the urban tax revenue.In the more country areas, the assimilation was advantageous to the countryside as they had dominance of population that would dictate local resources. The system made itself flexible–where number locally predominated it had the advantage of shared resources instead of the hard and fast urban-rural dichotomy that was ever in favour of cities.

The Greater Historical Trend.

The devolution of Musharraf was part of an even older trend: non-representative governments (British colonial rule, Pakistani military governments) implement reforms to local governments in order to become legitimate without actually sharing power. This is because these reforms make local politicians reliant on the center. In the meantime, every military government balances local empowerment with empowered presidential authority and federal centralization.

Once the provincial and federal governments that had been elected back to power, they were always against local government power- as they perceived it as competition. However, unlike India where local governments were under the constitutionally guaranteed third tier in the constitution, they were not given safe constitutional status in Pakistan. This exposed the local governments to suspension or abolishment at will in case provincial politicians felt threatened.

Unequal Implementation, Constitutional Guarantees (2005-2026).

The 18th Amendment and Constitutional Promise.

Since the restoration of democracy in 2008 after Musharraf resigned, Pakistan has started a constitutional evolution phase to ensure that the military does not manipulate local governments. The 18th Constitutional Amendment of 2010 was a watershed mark as it introduced an Article 140-A that required all provinces to have local governments and devolve political, administrative and financial accountability to elected officials. This was a guarantee of certainty in the constitution that was to be permanent and not to be suspended in future. The road to implementation was however controversial and not smooth.

The amendment repealed the Concurrent Legislative List; giving full powers to 26 subjects to provinces, comprising education, health, environment, social welfare and most importantly, local government. This transference implied that the provinces had acquired the monopoly to make legislations about local government constructions. Other federal ministries such as the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development were also abolished and all the policy-making in local governance was transferred to provinces. These amendments were indicative of a larger appetite towards provincial autonomy and less of federal centralization which had been the hallmark of past constitutional provisions.

Article 140-A, which was added under the 18th Amendment, contained the first Constitutional requirement of local government form, which said: “Every Province shall, by law, constitute a local system of government and shall devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and power to the elected representatives of the local governments. This altered local government as a provincial option of discretion to a constitutional obligation. Also included in Article 32 was the fact that The State should promote local government institutions, consisting of elected representatives of the regions involved as well as such institutions, in special regions, as may be established by law.

The 18th Amendment also redid the National Finance Commission making it to distribute federal resources to provinces where provinces are bound to distribute the resources to local governments. In 7th NFC Award of 2010, the federal divisible pool was allocated 57.5% to the provinces in theory forming a larger revenue base to be distributed locally by provincial governments.

Response at the provincial level.

Between 2008 and 2010, the elected local bodies that Musharraf had instituted were first suspended by all provinces claiming that they were unconstitutional as local government was a provincial subject. With the 18th Amendment, provinces passed Local Government Acts in 2012-2013 with Sindh (in 2013), Punjab (in 2013), and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (in 2010) and amendments made in 2014 producing a variety of systems based on local preferences than a nationwide standard. Local elections were put off by years in provinces despite constitutional requirements and Supreme Court orders. Balochistan had protracted elections between December 2013 and January 2015, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh did not have elections until 2015, after the intervention of the Supreme Court.

Status quo in Provinces.

As of 2024-2026, the present situation is extremely fluctuating in the context of Pakistan. There are local elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which were last held in 2021-2022 and have functional elected councils with extensive powers. Sindh has elected local governments, but with restricted autonomy, in 2015. In 2022-2023, Balochistan underwent elections. The local governments of Punjab have been suspended and their administration taken over several times even after elections. Islamabad Capital Territory, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan do not have elected councils at all.

The Dispensability between Law and Practice.

Although Article 140-A is a massive constitutional breakthrough and ensures that local governments are not dissolved arbitrarily, it is still largely unevenly applied by the provinces. Irrespective of the political orientation of the provincial governments, there has been a unanimous unwillingness of the provincial governments to genuinely empower local governments as they are considered as a threat to local provincial government and MPA (Member of Provincial Assembly) clout instead of a bona fide political partner.

This trend indicates that there has always been a constitutional dilemma in the political system of Pakistan; the provisions of the constitution indicate that the local government is guaranteed, but the provincial elected representatives, who should support decentralization, always sabotage this, continuing the centralized approach to provincial governance since independence in Pakistan.

Current Challenges Confronting Local Government

Structural Weakness and lack of political will

The system of local government in Pakistan is deep rooted in institutional instability that dilutes any attempts to initiate a reform in the country. Ever since the 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010 when the local government was mandated, provinces have consistently postponed, suspended or dissolved elected local authorities. The amendment was almost immediately violated as there were no local elections in four years after it was amended (2010-2014).

When elections actually did take place, the execution was horribly unequal and slow. The election procedure in Balochistan was alone a prolonged fourteen months (December 2013 to January 2015) long, whereas Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh postponed their elections until 2015 despite direct Supreme court orders directing them to do so. Pakistan have the widest gap between successive local elections in South Asian democracies (World Bank evaluation, 2020). Instead, unstable conditions existed after the elections. Local bodies in Punjab were suspended several times between 2015 and 2024 overturning the result of the democratic mandate, and in 2020-2021, the provincial government subsequently delayed local elections indefinitely due to administrative and financial restrictions.

Most outrageous of all, the Islamabad Capital Territory, Azar Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan do not have any elected councils as of now, which means that millions of people living there have not a single elected local representative. Such a pattern of recurring intervals of suspension and decision making delay and dissolution shows that provincial governments see local government institutions as dispensable and subordinate to provincial control, where constitutional guarantees are seen not as binding but as recommendations. It makes the local governments unable to build the institutional capacity or create any public confidence because they cannot count on continuity of elected representation or experience of local institutions.

Elitism and the Dilution of Power.

The main barrier to the true local government empowerment is not the administrative capacity or the lack of technical resources, but the conscious opposition of provincial political elites. The provincial assemblies (MPAs) and provincial parties consider empowered local governments as a danger to their political influence and patronage. When the development funds, and the delivery of services are controlled by the local governments, the MPAs are deprived the capacity to dispose patronage resources to the constituents, and this compromises their political worth and voters.

In a thorough investigation, Wilder, (1999) and later studies by Cheema and Mohmand, (2003), reported that the MPAs were on the offensive against the empowerment of the local governments, considering decentralization as diminishing their personal bargaining power in the distribution of resources to their supporters.

The elected District Nazims that cultivate real power may become political competitors to the traditional provincial parties and establish alternative centers of power that threaten party monopolies. According to research conducted by National Reconstruction Bureau (2002), the provincial governments (under control of different parties) responded by blocking local bodies or cutting the financial allocations as a punishment whenever the Nazims of the opposition parties were elected.

This situation is especially sharp in the countryside when landowners control the politics of the provinces in the feudal way. The fear of these traditional elites is that the empowered local governments may undermine their grip on rural citizens since they will offer an alternative institutional avenue of access to services and grievances by peasants and tenants.

In 2015, a study of the Asian Development Bank recorded that in Punjab and Sindh, big country landowners actively discouraged agricultural extension services, delivered through their local governments, to reach tenant farmers instead of relying on landlord-controlled dissemination systems. Provincial elites have opted to limit the authority of local government in order to maintain the status quo instead of using programmatic policies as a way of competing in the process of generating votes.

The research has continually pointed to political will as the major issue that hinders empowerment of the local government not administrative capacity or financial resources but rather it is the political will which tends to allocate only 10-20% of the constitutionally required resources to the local governments and withhold the rest to control by the province.

The provincial governments have the constitutional power, the administrative apparatus and the monetary resources to decentralize the real power, but they choose not to do so because decentralization would upset the power brokering system and easily accessible patronage that helps the provincial political elites. The opposition against the local government is essentially an issue of maintenance of an elite control and not the actual issue of the lack of efficiency in the governance and welfare of the people.

Bureaucratic Dominance with the DCO-DC System.

There is a structural issue that compromises elected local leadership; bureaucratic officers are more dominant than elected leaders. Provincial governments appoint District Coordination officers (DCOs) or Deputy Commissioners (DCs) at the high bureaucratic ranks (BS-20/21); who is the main accounting officer governing all the district departments and finances. Elected Nazims have to go through these appointed officials who are able to block or at least postpone a decision denying the assistance of the administration and refusing to process finances. This provides an institutional structure in which the bureaucrats, who are appointed, still have a veto power over the elected representatives, which makes democracy go in reverse.

A 2017 World Bank Pakistan Institutional and Governance Review, shows the DCO system introduced what researchers called parallel governance in which elected Nazims and appointed DCOs often gave conflicting orders, establishing administrative anarchy and service delivery delays. This was also made worse by the fact that after 2008, provinces started slowly reinstating the Deputy Commissioner system which was abolished under Musharraf in his devolution. This restoration gained enormous momentum in 2016 when the Civil Administration Ordinance (2016) of Punjab gave full life back to the DC office with more powers such as direct control over district administration, revenue collection and allocation of development funds- powers formerly vested in Nazims.

A comparative study recorded that the average response time to local government development project after the restoration of provincial control in 2008 was 12-18 months compared to 4-6 months with the DCOs establishing administrative bottlenecks. The same trends could be observed in Sindh where the Civil Administration Ordinance (2013) was categorical to subordinate the local government officials to the province-appointed administrators. Province were guaranteed that the appointed officials had more control over the ground rather than the elected ones by reinstating the Deputy Commissioner system composed of increased authority.

This dominance of the DCO by the DC makes a basic contradiction: the local governments are supposed to be in charge of service delivery and development, the administrative machinery and finances to do that are in the hands of the administrative machine. The bureaucratic structure works towards subverting democratic governance whereby elected officials are weakened by appointed officials who are answerable to provincial secretariats hence stripping away local democracy.

Lack of Data Infrastructure and Planning Capacity.

Planning and governance of local governments cannot occur well without dependable information, but they have grossly poor data infrastructure. There is no comprehensive database on population demographics, property ownership and economic activity of the local level in most districts. The property tax records which are very vital in the collection of revenue as well as planning are outdated, incomplete and in many places they are maintained using paper hence taxation is arbitrary and ineffective.

An audit by the Auditor General of Pakistan in 2019 of property tax records in 89 out of 130 districts discovered that property tax records had not been updated in the past 5 years, and manual recording provided a great opportunity to corrupt officials and lose revenue. The local governments rarely have access to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to plan land use and conduct spatial analysis, and this leaves them under the influence of their intuition instead of evidence to make decisions.

According to a survey conducted by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (2018), in 130 districts, GIS systems were functioning in only 12 districts, and these were not well maintained because of the absence of training and technical support. There is a paucity of management information systems to monitor the performance of service delivery, efficiency in expenditure, and satisfaction among citizens, and most local governments keep records in spreadsheets, which are old and have been using excel spreadsheets or even paper records.

The cost of this data deficit is negative in a cascading manner: local governments do not have the means to estimate the potential of revenues and to formulate fair tax systems; they cannot determine where service delivery priorities should be; they cannot distribute resources in a rational manner; they cannot determine whether or not services are actually reaching the target population; they cannot determine performance and can detect corruption.

Lack of the real data basically deprives local governance, which means that local governments are unable to perform generic administrative roles. This issue is even exacerbated because provincial governments and federal agencies do have some data infrastructure, but they seldom share it with the local governments, limiting the capacity of the local governments even more. In 2020, the provincial governments, through the assessment conducted by the South Asian Network on Food, Energy and Water (SANFEW), recorded that the provincial governments avoided providing revenue figures and population statistics to local governments, lest they be awarded higher fiscal allocations under the Provincial Finance Commission awards.

The extensive data systems would only be achieved through long-term commitment to technology, staff training, and institutional development investments that provincial governments have been resistant to making local institutions that they often regard with skepticism. The lack of data infrastructure is not a coincidence, but rather a planned provincial policy of starving the local governments with information to make independent decisions so that the province can continue to make key decisions.

Failure in Service Delivery in the face of Constitutional responsibility.

Although education and health services have been decentralized to local governments through the 18th Amendment, the delivery of these services in these vital areas is pathetic. In the rural schools, teacher absenteeism is a common occurrence which can be over 25 percent of the time and therefore the students are only receiving instruction at times lower than what are required.

A World Bank study of the education sector in Pakistan in 2016 concluded that the average teacher absenteeism in rural Punjab and rural Sindh was 26 and 32 percent respectively, with individual schools in some areas reporting over 40 percent levels of absenteeism. In rural Pakistan, Primary Health Centers (PHCs) are in a chronic shortage of essential medicine, diagnostic equipment, and staff, and patients are forced to travel some distance or go unattended altogether.

A Pakistan Health Survey conducted by the National Institute of Population Studies (2017) in rural districts found that 64 percent of PHCs had no basic medicines to treat common diseases, and 71 percent had no functioning diagnostic equipment because of no budgets allocated to their maintenance. The lack of proper maintenance budgets by local governments which do not have financial resources leads to deterioration of school infrastructure.

According to a 2019 UNICEF report, in Pakistan, about 40 percent of government schools do not have access to safe drinking water, and 35 percent of have no functioning sanitation facilities, the latter issue also being directly related to the low local government maintenance budgets. There are no adequate accountability systems that can be used to ensure that local service providers, who include teachers, health workers, administrators, etc., are accountable in case of low performance or absenteeism. It is incredibly astonishing that even with nominal devolution of education and health to local governments, provincial governments still have a strong hand on vital functions that dictate the quality of services.

The recruitment of teachers, transfers and postings are still under the control of the province and this gives the teachers an opportunity to avoid being punished in their home town by taking the case to the provincial authorities. Curriculum standards, examination systems and educational policy are not aligned with local requirements but are still provincial. Such disjointed structure, in which local governments are held accountable in service delivery but have no control over individuals, budgets, and policies, ensures failure. This conscious decentralization of power forms a system in which the local governments are scapegoats of provincial failures, and provincial governments are absolved by saying that they have now made education and health a local burden.

Local Nazims are not allowed to dismiss absentee teachers, to raise and lower salaries to recruit qualified teachers, and to system design curricula that reflect the economic conditions in the area. They are used as scapegoats to blame them in case of failure due to provincial restrictions. What has been achieved is that even with constitutional entitlement of local government control over health and education, the sectors are still being managed within provincial bureaucracies that value control over performance.

These failures in service delivery are not incidental but structural due to the lack of willingness by the provincial governments to devolve authority, as mandated by the constitution, which results in a situation where local governments are blamed but not given the real authority.

Fiscal Federalism Gap: Local Government Financial Crisis.

Centralization of Revenue and Vertical imbalance.

The local government structure of Pakistan is currently in a severe financial crisis that is based on excessive centralization of revenue. The federal government collects 91.3 percent of all government revenue, provinces collect most of the remaining 8.7 percent and local governments practically do not have the capacity to generate any substantial own-source revenue. Although the 7 th award of the National finance commission provides that 57.5 percent of federal resources will be allocated to provinces with 10 percent allocated to local governments, the actual transfers seldom go this far. Constitutional devolution requires but starves local governments on the 85-90 percent to be retained at the provincial level in a systematic manner.

This type of vertical fiscal imbalance, in which upper levels dictate revenues and lower levels dictate expenditures, generates a situation of an impossible governance. Local governments rely on provincial grants, 85-90 percent of their budgets but in most cases the grants are designed to be discretionary, unpredictable and made according to provincial political exigencies instead of the local needs or constitutional distribution. Decentralization rhetoric has not changed federal government spending, with the federal government still consuming 63.1 percent of total government expenditures, and providing little to the provincial and local governments to meet their devolved mandates.

The Misfit of Responsibilities and Resources.

The basic issue is a serious imbalance between the responsibilities and required financial resources. The provinces have devolved important services delivery functions to local governments without the corresponding financial resources, education, health, water supply, sanitation, and roads. Local own-source revenues (property taxes, user charges, licensing fees) are usually no more than 10-15 percent of local budgets, and their collection rates are usually low, the tax base is narrow and they are blocked by political opposition to effective taxation.

This has caused an impossible scenario whereby local governments are obligated by the constitution to offer services they do not have the money to offer, thus making them easy scapegoats of the people in the event of bad service delivery. The recent 2024-25 budget data identify the crisis: the federal budget amounts to PKR 18.877 trillion and provinces obtain about PKR 10.8 trillion in the form of the NFC share, but the local governments obtain only PKR 1-1.5 trillion (10-15 percent of provincial budgets).

Own-source revenue at the local level is still estimated to be PKR 150-200 billion- under 2 percent of the total government revenue. This implies that local governments are in control of less than 5 percent of overall government resources yet have more than 200 million citizens and provide basic services. The mismatch in structure also has the effect of making sure that local governments are not in a position to execute constitutional roles in a manner that is satisfactory so that actual decentralization cannot be possible without financial devolution which the provinces have always been unwilling to adopt.

Recommendations: Strengthening the local Government System in Pakistan.

Constitutional and Legislative Alterations.

The constitutional system of local government in Pakistan needs to be reinforced to eliminate recurrent suspension and delay experienced in the democratic rule. Article 140-A also needs to be revised to have a set of time limits on local elections, with a maximum of 120 days after the expiry of the last term of the council, replacing the discretionary period that has been seen to allow the provinces to withhold elected bodies due to them. An exclusive constitutional chapter on the local government needs to be introduced, with minimum standards set on local government powers, electoral procedures, and representation instead of relying on provincial discretion.

Most importantly, the suspension of elected local bodies must not be allowed without specific Supreme Court authorization and the arbitrary nature of dissolving councils whenever they please should be removed, which is the current prerogative of provincial governments. Moreover, they should establish a mandatory requirement that Provincial Finance Commissions to provide a minimum of 25 percent of provincial revenues to local governments by formula distribution, instead of being transitional as discretionary. These constitutional reforms would make local government a safeguarded level with guaranteed protection and rights that are binding.

Fiscal Reforms to permit local freedom.

The local governments cannot operate successfully without sufficient financial tools, and the whole fiscal reforms are necessary which will help to increase own-source revenue and provincial transfers. The local budgets through property tax reforms ( updating the valuation and adopting GIS mapping to increase tax base) and user fees on the local services at cost-recovery rates and local business licensing payments should be increased to 25-30 percent of the own-source revenue. Discretionary provincial grants must be replaced with a formula based system which allocates resources on objective criteria such as population, indices of backwardness and fiscal effort instead of on political grounds.

The development of Local Development Funds involving direct federal and provincial transfers that do not pass through provincial secretariats would avoid the provincial governments to appropriate funds that are to be used locally. Grants based on actual service delivery indicators would motivate the local governments to enhance accountability besides making sure the resources are directed to the intended beneficiaries. These fiscal reforms would make local governments less dependent on provincial discretion and it will provide a sustainable source of local revenue autonomy.

Governance Reforms to make authority clear.

The confusion among the elected and appointed officials of the institutions should be cleared up by making it clear that District Coordination Officers and Deputy Commissioners will act as assistants to the elected councils and not as their counterparts. Principal accounting officer position should be abolished and handed over to elected Finance Committee Chairpersons, and thus the financial management will be the direct responsibility of elected representatives.

Local government appointments should be founded on meritocratic rather than patronage-based recruitment systems and since there is a need to have a local government service cadre, it should be established. With an e-government in place to provide transparency in the budget, track expenditures and procurement opportunities, corruption would be less likely and the populace could exercise control. These administrative changes would remove the parallel system of governance that has enabled appointed bureaucrats to frustrate elected representatives to ensure democratic accountability.

Capacity Building and Skills Development.

It is necessary to train professional level and provide such technical support to elected low-level representatives who have to control complex governance tasks. Two weeks training of all new representatives elected to the office would guarantee minimum competence in terms of financial management, purchasing, and service delivery. Setting up of Local Government Training Institutes at every province would allow continuous professional service and regular systems of governance.

The provincial support units would offer technical support to the local governments in financial management, procurement and service delivery planning. Standardization of manuals and operating guidelines would also be developed so that the councils would always be consistent in their operations and as well as the sharing of best practices and peer learning. Capacity building is not just an improvement of technicality but it is the fundamental groundwork of transforming constitutional devolution into effective governance.

Mechanisms of Transparency and Accountability.

The legitimacy of local government is based on the transparency and accountability to the constituents and it requires the adoption of information access and oversight systems. Local governments are supposed to be opened to the provisions of the Right to Information legislation and proactive disclosure should be created, which means that all budgets, expenditures, and development plans must be published online in an accessible form. Service delivery performance through the perspectives of the users should be evaluated by the Citizen Report Cards and social audits, which will establish feedback loops that lead to accountability.

The local ombudsman offices are supposed to have grievance redressal mechanisms that can be easily accessed by the citizens who have been the victims of malfeasance by the local government. Provincial audit departments with regular performance audits and reported publicly would provide an external accountability and best practices would be found. These transparency systems also turn the local government into a transparent bureaucracy, which is answerable to its citizen needs.

Harmonising Local Governance and Sustainable Development Goals.

The local governments need to be used to attain the commitments of the Sustainable Development Goals in Pakistan and to do this, SDGs need to be incorporated into the local planning and monitoring. The SDG targets applicable to local contexts should support the local government development plans and local SDG monitoring structures would be set to monitor the progress towards the achievement of poverty reduction, education, health and environmental sustainability.

The achievement indicators of SDG should be attached to development grants, which encourage the local governments to focus on development that promotes national sustainable development commitments. The SDG implementation and monitoring would involve the community in ownership and create social accountability. Local Progress reports of local SDG would be relevant to national reporting and would establish performance benchmarks. Localization of SDGs works in making the abstract global obligations to be made real at local level and hence this makes sustainable development real to the common people.

Conclusion

The local government structure in Pakistan has been weak since the constitution took effect seven decades ago and even the reforms that have been conducted every other now and then. The 18 th Constitutional Amendment of 2010 held promise of true devolution but provinces have not been able to convert the constitutional requirements into effective empowerment, as a result of political resistance of the elites who are afraid to lose the patronage opportunities and power.

The fiscal federalism gap where federal and provincial governments hold 85-90 percent of the revenues and leave the service delivery roles to the local governments devolves service delivery roles which make the local governments unable to rule effectively. The provincial differences demonstrate that the political will is more important than the constitutional provisions: The relative success of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is shocking compared to the further centralization of Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan. Democratic future of Pakistan lies in an operating local government since, the citizens will only be in a position to build faith to the democracy after being responsive in the local governance.

The promise in Article 140-A of the constitution requires a constitutional clarification with time limits, fiscal reforms with sufficient resources, administrative restructuring with bureaucracy subordinated to elected representatives, capacity building to provide local officials, transparency mechanisms to allow citizen accountability, and performance incentives to provide provincial assistance based on local results, and seven decades after independence, Pakistan is forced to fulfill these statements.

Pakistan has not been able to become fully democratic without having the actual local government, which is prone to centralization and crisis. The lost connection between the citizens and the state can be established only by political bravery of the provincial rulers, the pressure of civil society, the constitutional requirements enacted in court and finally, the demand of the citizens to the grassroots democracy.