THE 18th Amendment and the seventh NFC Award have now placed responsibility for development in the provincial domain. However, the provinces appear to be unprepared to shoulder the responsibility.
Provincial development planning is limited to putting together a disparate collection of schemes. There is little in terms of determining the relationship of one scheme to another. Resultantly, there is no overall direction to the development process. There is, thus, an abject need to introduce formal planning processes at the provincial level.
While institutionalising the planning process and upgrading capacity is an absolute necessity, it will not be sufficient to achieve the goal of socioeconomic development. This is because, unlike in the first half of the period since independence, the institutional capacity of state agencies has deteriorated to the point where it is no longer fully capable of enforcing its writ in terms of implementing projects efficiently. A decline in technical capacity and a steep rise in corruption at almost every level of government bureaucracy are two main internal factors in the weakening of the government`s institutional capacity.
The first half of the country`s life saw the planning and efficient execution of such large and complex projects as the Indus River replacement works, the Karakoram and Indus highways, Port Qasim, the Steel Mills, heavy electrical and mechanical complexes, and so on. Now, there are hardly any schemes that are completed on time or within the original cost estimate or that last till their stipulated life without major repairs and rehabilitation.
In fact, a major portion of Sindh`s annual development plan comprises rehabilitation schemes. One project in Karachi that collapsed within a month of its inauguration aptly illustrates the level of institutional decay of the public sector`s implementation capacity. With regard to social services, public facilities are in a woeful state and needs no elaboration.
A case can be made for strengthening the capacity of the public sector to deliver. Unfortunately, the malaise is too deep and the deterioration has passed the point of no return. Development and the needs of the people cannot await the luxury of public-sector reform. While there is a cadre of highly competent and committed public servants, the majority is mediocre and a minority — mercifully, microscopic — is incompetent, petty-minded, manipulative and corrupt. Unfortunately, the latter has tended to dominate over the years.
At the other end of the spectrum, the mantra of the neoliberal lobby is one of outright privatisation. However, privatisation too has failed to deliver. Zeal Pak Cement and KESC are two of the many examples of mindless privatisation that has seriously damaged the public interest.
There are two reasons for the failure of the private sector. One, the Pakistani private sector is inherently weak and has failed to graduate from the status of a trading class to the level of entrepreneurship. As such, it cannot survive in a competitive environment. It has routinely claimed the absence of an enabling investment environment within the country, but has failed to make its mark abroad, even where a congenial enabling environment is available; for example, the UAE, where Indian businesses dominate
The second reason is more fundamental. The very objective of socioeconomic development is to enable those bereft of income-earning endowments to acquire the same. However, the market does not, by definition, respond to need; it responds to purchasing power. It responds to the needs of the rich and ignores the needs of the poor. The resultant inequality in the distribution of income and wealth is politically and morally unacceptable.
A third stakeholder that has emerged in the development arena is civil society organisations. Many of them have recorded remarkable successes in the provision of education, health and other social services efficiently, in terms of quality as well as cost. However, a limitation of civil society organisations is their inability to go to scale.
Given the relative weaknesses of the public and private sectors and civil society organisations, it is advisable to harness the relative strengths of all three. In this respect, the traditional divide between public versus private sector-centred development strategies is now irrelevant. Ideology has to give way to pragmatism. The demands of socioeconomic development are too large and too urgent for any one section of society to meet in isolation from other stakeholders. The goal of socioeconomic development calls for a complete reorientation of the paradigm for executing development plans. The government needs to recognise that, while keeping ownership in the public domain, implementation or management can be contracted out either to a private party or to a civil society organisation — wherever feasible. If not in their entirety, schemes or functions can be unbundled and specific parts contracted out. Of course, the implementation or management contract needs to include specified performance standards, capable of being subjected to a performance audit.
There is an urgent imperative to pool the resources of the public sector, the private sector and civil society. The new paradigm has to be one of partnering between government, private sector and civil society: partnering with the private sector for the execution of infrastructure projects and with civil society organisations for the delivery of social services. Public-private partnership is not a new concept, but has been applied sparingly. It is now necessary to adopt it as a primary approach to development.
Sindh has taken the first steps in this direction, realising the enormity of the developmental challenges and the resource and institutional capacity constraints facing the province. Its first venture under the PPP regime is the 60km, four-lane international standard Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas highway, scheduled to be completed on time and within the stipulated cost in early 2012. The highway, being built by a private company, will be `owned` and maintained by it for 30 years. The Sindh government`s share in the cost of the highway is 30 per cent, as a soft loan to the company.
The upshot of this arrangement is that, if as a result of partnering, the government has to put in, say, one-third of the cost, it will be able to undertake three projects for the same amount of money that it would have to devote to one project. And quality product and escape from cost overruns and delays are added benefits.
Further, realising the continuing inability of government departments to deliver basic health services efficiently, the Sindh government set up the Public Private Health Initiative, and handed over the management of over 1,000 Basic Health Units (BHUs) to it. These BHUs are now actually served by doctors, including women doctors, and stocked with necessary quality medicines in premises that are clean and well maintained and providing quality primary medical care to millions among the rural population.
The two successful cases outlined above point to adopting partnering as the new paradigm for executing development projects and delivering social services. Needless to say, there is opposition to the partnership paradigm from vested interests. However, there is a need to formally adopt and institutionalise the process as it appears to be the only viable approach, under existing circumstances, to achieve socioeconomic developmental objectives.
The writer is a former adviser for planning & development to the Sindh chief minister.
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