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Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan: The 1960s and 1970s Revisited
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2013
Abstract
The present paper examines the growth of corruption in Pakistan in the 1960s and 1970s with particular emphasis on the factors that influenced changes in the behavioural norms of the officer cadres or higher bureaucracy of Pakistan. The main argument is that during the 1960s increases in development spending and the manipulation of local governments by civil servants to help the Ayub Khan military regime secure legitimacy led to a substantial increase in the level of corruption. However, while the increase was alarming, the higher bureaucracy was still fairly clean and, given leadership, training and resources, in a position to contain the spread of corruption. In the 1970s the first Pakistan People's Party government enacted a number of reforms aimed at asserting political control over the civilian bureaucracy while pursuing a socialistic development model that justified nationalisation of industrial and commercial assets. These substantially undermined the ability of the higher bureaucracy to fight back against corruption while dramatically increasing state penetration of society and the economy, thus making opportunities for corruption more abundant. After General Zia-ul Haq's military coup in July 1977, the new regime, though it received plenty of good advice, was not interested in enhancing the autonomy and prestige of the services as that would diminish Zia's personal power over the state apparatus.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2013
References
1 A prominent global ranking is the Failed State Index prepared by Foreign Policy quarterly and the Fund for Peace. In the 2011 rankings, out of 60 vulnerable states evaluated on the basis of a basket of factors (demographic pressures, refugees, human rights, security machinery, elite factionalism, uneven socioeconomic development, foreign military intervention, etc.), Pakistan emerges as the 12th most vulnerable state. This places Pakistan in the same league as Nigeria and Kenya. There are obvious problems with the rankings – Pakistan is much better off than countries like Nepal that manage to secure a better rank (27), but the truly disturbing factor is most of the countries score very close to each other (in the range of 90–110, the higher the score the more vulnerable the state in question). The Failed State Index can be viewed online: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/17/2011_failed_states_index_interactive_map_and_rankings (accessed 5 December 2011).
2 One future projection that is making the rounds these days in Pakistan is Cohen, Stephen P., The Future of Pakistan (Washington DC, 2011)Google Scholar. It can be downloaded from http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/BROOKINGS_TheFutureofPakistan.pdf (accessed 5 December 2011).
3 In the 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index prepared by Transparency International to rank countries by perceived public sector corruption, Pakistan's rank is 134/183, with a score of 2.5 (the lower the score, the more corrupt a country is perceived to be), placing it in the same league as Niger and Sierra Leone. One point to note is that for more than half the countries on the list, the differences in score are negligible, clearly an indication that corruption is a global problem. See http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/ (accessed 11 September 2013).
4 For a penetrating study of property relations in South Asia see Shigemochi, Hirashima, The Structure of Disparity in Developing Agriculture: A Case Study of the Pakistan Punjab (Tokyo, 1978)Google Scholar. Hirashima draws a distinction between control of the land and ownership in the Western sense of the term. The state in South Asia recognised occupancy in exchange for payment of rent to the ruler and his servants, the latter owing the ruler administrative and military service. Failure to meet the demands of the ruler resulted in dispossession while refusal on part of the peasants to cultivate the land was severely punished. Ibid ., pp. 12–13.
5 The Mughals thus drew a distinction between a “true” monarch who exercised restraint towards his subjects out of enlightened self-interest and a “selfish” ruler who did not practise self-restraint leading to excessive oppression and expropriation of the country's wealth. Allami, Abu'l Fazl, A'in-i Akbari, trans. Blochmann, H. (Calcutta, 1873; reprint, Lahore, 2003)Google Scholar.
6 For a blistering classical account of corruption in Imperial Rome see Tacitus, The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius and Nero, trans. J. C. Yardley (Oxford, 2008). A favoured method of securing another's property was to accuse them of treason, something that Tiberius was quite happy to do to his real and imagined enemies. Ibid ., p. 104. A practice designed to uncover the hidden wealth of those fallen from favour was to torture their slaves and servants. Ibid ., p. 130. To further this process Tiberius relied increasingly on “the informers, a class of men devised for the destruction of society, and never sufficiently checked by legal penalties” who “were now being given the inducement of rewards”. Ibid ., p. 152.
7 Katouzian, Homa, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London, 2000)Google Scholar, articulates a theory of arbitrary rule with reference to the Persian historical experience of governance. Often such instances affected relationships within the royal family: “Nevertheless, it is extremely instructive that Naser-al-Din Shah – who was by no means the worst example of an arbitrary ruler of Iran – almost withdrew the right of succession from his son and heir-designate, Mozaffar-al-Din Mirza (the governor general of Azerbaijan) and sold it to his other son, Zel al-Soltan, the governor general of Isfahan. He wrote to the former that the latter had offered him [one million tomans] for the position. Zel was well known both for his shrewdness and lack of scruple. Mozaffar was lucky, therefore, that in reply to his father the Shah, his able secretary, Amir Nagan Garrusi, warned that Zel might well spend another [five million tomans] for the Shah's position itself”. Ibid ., p. 9.
8 In Tsarist Russia, as in present-day Russia, corruption in the form of bribery and abuse of power, was endemic. Part of the motivation to steal and abuse came from the precarious position of the service nobility for there were no autonomous institutions capable of lawfully resisting the Tsar's “highly personalised rule” that treated the country and “its subjects as its property”. Chubarov, Alexander, The Fragile Empire: A History of Imperial Russia (New York, 1999)Google Scholar, pp. 14–15.
9 In the case of the Mughals the practice seems to have been that in case of rebellion one-fifth of the confiscated wealth of the rebels went to the emperor and the rest was kept by the officers. Abu'l Fazl, Ain'i-Akbari, p. 572.
10 For examples see Kautilya, The Arthashastra, trans. L. N. Rangarajan (New Delhi, 1992), pp. 294–303. Kautilya elaborates some forty ways in which the servants of the state can cheat the ruler, the ruler's subjects and each other, and prescribes punishments for those engaged in such activities.
11 This was not unique to Indian empires. Procopius's The Secret History chronicles numerous instances of spies and informers being used, as they had been in Imperial Rome, by Justinian and Theodora, to lay their hands on the wealth of others: “On all moveable property and on the most attractive estate properties they laid their hands just as they fancied, but they set aside those which were liable to oppressive and crushing taxation, and with sham generosity returned them to their previous owners. These people in consequence were throttled by tax collectors and reduced to penury by the ever-mounting interest on their debts, and thus unwillingly dragged out a miserable existence that was no more than a lingering death”. Procopius, The Secret History, trans. G. A. Williamson and Peter Sarris (London, 2007), p. 51.
12 Mohammad Ali Jinnah, in his 11 August 1947 Address to the Constituent Assembly, highlights the menace of such practices. For the full text online see http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/constituent_address_11aug1947.html (accessed 11 September 2013).
13 For a more comprehensive treatment of Pakistan's problems of governance that benefits from the declassified record of the Government of Pakistan, identifies and analyses its culture of power, and corruption, see Niaz, Ilhan, The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan, 1947–2008 (Karachi, 2011)Google Scholar. For a broader treatment of the historical and theoretical underpinnings of South Asia's culture of power see Niaz, Ilhan, An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent (Islamabad, 2006)Google Scholar.
14 These patronage networks, as Alexander Evans explains in his study of Pakistan, Nigeria, Russia and China, are not unique to South Asia and can even be found in the West. The difference is in degree and the coherence of the patronage network as compared to the formal institutions. See Evans, Alexander, “The Utility of Informal Networks to Policy Makers”, in Jones, David Martin, Lane, Ann and Schulte, Paul, (eds.), Terrorism, Security and the Power of Informal Networks (Northampton, 2010), pp. 13–27 Google Scholar.
15 The situation across the border in India is comparable to Pakistan when it comes to corruption. India's Planning Commission estimated that 70 to 90 per cent of funds for rural development are wasted or stolen by a web of corrupt officials and politicians going right up to local MPs, and sometimes to the chief ministers as well. Surveys indicate that more than nine out of ten Indians believe their political leaders to be corrupt. Gupta, Ramchandra, India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy (London, 2007), pp. 683–686 Google Scholar.
16 The sheer number of refugees complicated the process. In 1951, it was estimated that 7 million Pakistanis, some 10% of the population, were refugees from India, including 4.68 million from the East Punjab who fled to the West Punjab. 500,000 West Bengalis and Assamese plus 200,000 Urdu-speaking people from the United Provinces and Bihar, had fled to East Bengal, and the balance had settled in urban areas of Sindh. See Talbot, Ian, Pakistan: A Modern History (London, 2005), p. 101 Google Scholar.
17 1949, File No. 20/CF/49, Government of Pakistan, Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, No. 2300-Reh.-49/1676, “Policy Regarding Allotment of Evacuee Property”, p. 1.
18 Ibid .
19 Ibid ., p. 16.
20 Ibid .
21 File No. 108/CW/54, Karachi, 20 December 1954, “Allotment of Evacuee Plots in Karachi to Government Servants”, p. 1.
22 In East Bengal “the impression that seems to have gained ground in the public mind” was “that there is undue interference with the police from the Ministers and MLAs” and while the officer ranks were “able to withstand the influence”, subordinate officials were less resilient under pressure and cracked more often. It was warned that if political pressure continued to be applied to the police there was a distinct “possibility of this virus infecting the officers. . . .” See Report of the East Bengal Police Committee, 1953 (Dacca, 1954), p. 7. Today, political interference in the police is rampant and officers have by and large adjusted to this reality. Politically-connected subordinates can thus ignore their officers, while officers, keen to avoid arbitrary transfer or punishment, see themselves as personal servants of those in power.
23 For a valuable study of the effects of Partition on two of Pakistan's most important industrial centres, see Chattha, Ilyas, Partition and Locality: Violence, Migration, and Development in Gujranwala and Sialkotm 1947–1961 (Karachi, 2011)Google Scholar. In Gujranwala, “the Hindus and Sikhs formed about one-third of the city's population” but “paid more than 90 per cent of its taxes and revenues”, Ibid ., p. 45. The flight of Hindus and Sikhs created opportunities for Muslims who, sometimes with state assistance, gradually took over the infrastructure that was left behind by its former owners.
24 Siddiqui, Tasneem Ahmad, Towards Good Governance (Karachi, 2001), p. 3 Google Scholar.
25 Ibid ., p. 11.
26 Formerly known as the National Documentation Centre (NDC).
27 Report of the Special Committee for Eradication of Corruption from Services (Rawalpindi, 1967).
28 In the Pakistani bureaucracy the Secretary Establishment is the head of personnel management, chief secretaries are heads of the provincial administrations, and the Special Police Establishment is responsible for investigating corruption within the services.
29 One way of looking at Pakistan's problems of governance, development and political stabilisation is that they arise from a dysfunctional identity that failed to adequately carve out a secular space for discourse and gradually became more responsive to conservative interpretations of Islam. Ayub Khan's military regime stands out, in this respect, as the only government in Pakistan's history to have made a determined effort to reject the ulama's role in interpreting Islam and craft for itself a greater secular space, or a space in which Islam could be reinterpreted in light of worldly necessities. Sheikh, Farzana, Making Sense of Pakistan (London, 2009), p. 92 Google Scholar. Sheikh has based her attempt to make sense of Pakistan for a western audience on published sources, many of them of western origin. What is intriguing is that many hardline conservatives and militarists would agree with Sheikh's analysis that Pakistan's crisis of identity is the root of its other problems, although they would argue that Pakistan is not sufficiently ideological a state and that is the source of all the confusion in public life. Whatever the merits of this approach, one can argue with equal, if not greater effectiveness, that Pakistan's crisis of identity is rooted in the frustration of secular aspirations and the loss of credibility and legitimacy of modernist elements on account of poor performance. These same modernist elements, such as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, engaged in pandering to the conservatives who had only to point out the gap between promise and performance and attribute it to the insufficiently Islamic character of the westernised Muslims.
30 Report of the Pay and Services Commission, 1959–1962 (Karachi, 1962).
31 These policies did produce considerable growth and development. The Ayub Khan era 1958–1969 saw the highest industrial growth rates in Pakistan's history with Compound Annual Rates of Growth for the Large Scale Manufacturing Sector in Labour averaging 15.1%, in Capital 17.8%, and in overall Value Added 26%. In contrast, the Annual Rates of Growth in Value Added and Capital were a fraction of the Ayub Khan era during the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1969–70 and 1980–81, the growth rate for Value Added was just 6.4%, and for Capital it was 9.5% - predictably, given the employment generation approach of Bhutto's socialist policies, Labour grew at 17.1%. The 1980s saw Large Scale Manufacturing experience about the same growth rates for Labour, Capital and Value Added (16.8%, 9.1% and 6.1%, respectively) as it had in the 1970s. Wizarat, Shahida, The Rise and Fall of Industrial Productivity in Pakistan (Karachi, 2002), p. 36 Google Scholar. These statistics encapsulate in a few numbers the economic tragedy that befell Pakistan as its industrial revolution was derailed in the 1970s leaving the country trapped in a low-level equilibrium. Such is the legacy of Bhutto's populism and Zia's lack of constructive vision.
32 For more see, S. K. Delhavi, “Report on the Administrative Law & Courts in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Sweden & Spain”, (Rome-February, 1961, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Pakistan, Karachi). Delhavi's study was submitted to the Constitution Commission set up by Ayub Khan to evaluation the form of government best suited to Pakistan. The Commission advised in favour of a Presidential form of government, but observed that the two major causes of the derailment of previous exercises in constitution making were “undue interference in the administration on party considerations” and “an arbitrary exercise by the Executive of its extensive powers”. Report of the Constitution Commission, Pakistan, 1961 (Karachi, 1961), p. 3.
33 That said, the Ayub Khan regime was remarkably insulated from the public mood. It went ahead, for example, with the celebration of a Decade of Development just as protests against the government were gathering steam. The actual overthrow of the regime was occasioned by a change in the mood of the senior army leadership under General Yahya Khan, commander in chief from 1966, who resented Ayub Khan's reliance on the civil servants and wanted the army to play a more active role in running the day-to-day affairs of the country.
34 Report of the Special Committee for Eradication of Corruption from Services, p. 3.
35 Ibid ., p. 4.
36 Ibid ., p. 7.
37 Ibid ., pp. 12–14.
38 Ibid ., p. 13.
39 Ibid . A munshi is typically a clerk or record keeper.
40 Ibid .
41 Ibid .
42 Ibid ., p. 14.
43 Ibid .
44 Ibid .
45 Ibid ., p. 16.
46 Ibid ., p. 25.
47 Ibid ., p. 26.
48 Ibid ., p. 51. The conviction rate comes out to 31.23%.
49 Ibid ., p. 53. The conviction rate comes out to 21.30%.
50 Ibid ., p. 55. The conviction rate comes out to 24.69%.
51 Ibid ., p. 15.
52 Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto “came to domestic politics by way of foreign affairs. His experiences in the international arena deeply affected his perceptions of Pakistan's domestic politics”. His attitude towards foreign aid, especially from the West, was increasingly hostile for he felt that such aid was being used “to build up an indigenous capitalist class in Pakistan that would be subservient to outside interests” in addition to running up external debt. “These perspectives linked Bhutto with important domestic constituencies and social groups, including elements in the bureaucracy, that had begun to question the whole system of aid at a time when aid inputs had begun to decline and the problem of debt servicing assume major proportions”. Jones, Philip E., The Pakistan People's Party: Rise to Power (Karachi, 2003), p. 89 Google Scholar. Once the PPP achieved electoral success, and indeed ever since then, its internal politics revolved around the question of allocation of ministries for these would be “the primary channels of patronage as well as policy making” though interest in the latter was not that strong. Ibid ., p. 442.
53 One component of this agenda was ensuring better distribution of wealth and reversing the trickle-down and elitist economic policies of the Ayub Khan regime. Interestingly, the percentage of income out of total household income earned by the bottom 20% of Pakistani households fell from 8.4% in 1970 to 7.4% by 1979. Wizarat, The Rise and Fall of Industrial Productivity in Pakistan, p. 24. Thus, the poorest 20% of Pakistanis experienced a marginal decrease in their share of national income under the populist, state-employment oriented, Bhutto government. On the other hand during the Ayub Khan era, the same percentage rose from 6.4% in 1963 to 8.4% in 1970. Ibid .
54 In March 1972 some 2,000 civil servants in the federal government and more than 500 in the provincial administrations were dismissed, demoted, or otherwise punished using Martial Law Regulation (MLR) 114. In August 1973 eight Secretaries, one Additional Secretary, and seven Joint Secretaries were retired from service, the orders for dismissal having apparently been communicated verbally. In October 1976, in the run up to the March 1977 general elections, 174 officers were dismissed from service and the plan was to carry out another purge after the elections were over.
55 During the first PPP government there were about 5,500 political appointments to the federal and provincial administration in grades 16–22 (22 being the highest and corresponding to a Secretary to the Government, and 16 being one grade below an officer with the possibility of promotion to officer rank).
56 The old structure, which was complex but very flexible and geared towards limiting promotions against actual posts, had four Classes and 650+ pay scales. It was replaced by a unified grading structure that began at Grade 1 and rose to Grade 22 and was tied to a standardised National Pay Scale.
57 Report of the Subcommittee on Law and Order, 1976 (Islamabad, 1976), p. 18. Ch. Fazle-Haque, Secretary, Interior, was the Chairman of the 1976 Subcommittee on Law and Order.
58 Ibid ., p. 15. Twenty-three years earlier, the East Bengal Police Committee had warned of the dangers of allowing political interference in the police. By 1976, these warnings, long disregarded, had become reality as the police was compromised at all levels by political interference and arbitrary use of the power of transfer.
59 White Paper on the Performance of the Bhutto Regime Vol. IV, The Economy (Islamabad, 1979), p. 30.
60 Ibid ., p. 32.
61 Ibid ., p. 52.
62 Ibid .
63 Kemal, A. R., “Patterns and Growth of Pakistan's Industrial Sector”, in Khan, Shahrukh Rafi, (ed.), Fifty Years of Pakistan's Economy: Traditional Topics and Contemporary Concerns (Karachi, 1999), p. 154 Google Scholar.
64 Final Report of the Taxation Commission, Vol. I (Karachi, 1974), p. 19. Tax to GDP stood at 13% while public expenditure stood at 25% of GDP. The Chairman of the 1974 Taxation Commission was Mahboob ur Rashid, Chairman of the Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation (PICIC).
65 White Paper on the Performance of the Bhutto Regime Vol. IV, The Economy, p. 66.
66 Ibid ., p. 74. Mumtaz Bhutto was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's cousin and a prominent leader within the PPP.
67 Ibid ., p. 79.
68 Charles Kennedy takes a somewhat more sanguine view of the impact of the Lateral Entry Scheme on the civil service. He makes the case that the negative opinions held by career civil servants of the lateral entrants made politicisation and disregard for departmental and professional requirements “self-fulfilling prophecies”. Kennedy has a point in that career civil servants who had earned their appointments after years of examination preparation and training would not take kindly to a sudden influx (basically between 1972 and 1975) of political appointees. Kennedy, Charles, Bureaucracy in Pakistan (Karachi, 1987), p. 141 Google Scholar. Some of appointees were competent, on a few occasions as or more able than the career civil servants recruited via competitive examinations. The effect on the service ethos, however, was negative, new divisions were created and internal discipline suffered. However, that is precisely what Bhutto wanted – a divided and politicised civil service that would do his government's bidding without asking twice.
69 In 1976, the nominal pay of a Secretary to the Government (about 3,500 Pakistani Rupees) was about the same or slightly less than it had been in 1947 (about 4,000 Pakistani Rupees). Report of the National Pay Commission, 1976 (Islamabad, 1976), pp. 82–83. The decline in real pay forced more civil servants to rely on state-provided transport and housing, which, in turn, created a large potential for abuse and favouritism. The Chairman of the 1976 Pay Commission was Supreme Court Justice Anwar ul Haq.
70 Report of the National Pay Commission, 1970–1972 (Islamabad, 1972), p. 123. The Chairman of the 1972 Pay Commission was Mumtaz Hasan, former Secretary, Ministry of Finance.
71 Report of the Commission on the Eradication of Corruption, 1979 (Islamabad, 1979), p. 14. Supreme Court Justice Shafi-ur-Rehman was the Chairman of this commission.
72 Ibid .
73 Ibid ., pp. 18–19.
74 Ibid ., pp. 34–35.
75 Ibid ., p. 35.
76 Ibid ., p. 45.
77 Report of the Civil Services Commission, 1978–1979 (Islamabad, 1979), p. 153. The Chairman of the 1978–9 Commission was Supreme Court Justice Anwar-ul-Haq.