New Provinces, Old Rules? A Recipe for the Same Failure

The debate over dividing Pakistan’s existing provinces into smaller units has moved from the fringe to the centre of politics. Every major party has promised to consider it. The conversation is serious, and it is now.

This is a historic opportunity. It is also a historic trap.
If we simply carve smaller provinces without changing the rules of the game, we will not get better governance. We will get smaller versions of the same failure. The same ruling families will capture the new assemblies. The same electable will win the new seats. And the same cycle will repeat: ministries handed out as patronage, policies made by people who have never managed a budget, and citizens left wondering why their new province feels exactly like the old one.

Smaller provinces give us a blank page. But if we write the same constitution on that page, we have wasted the ink.
Any new province needs just two things. First, allow the party that wins a majority to appoint ministers who are not members of the assembly. Second, bind every one of those ministers to a public performance contract with hard targets and automatic consequences. One amendment to find the right people. One management system to make them perform.

Our current system limits the cabinet to elected MPAs. Winning an election requires money and biraderi loyalty. It does not require knowing how to read a balance sheet or run a hospital. The result is what we see today: ministries go to the MPA who spent the most on his campaign, not to the person who can actually deliver. A single amendment would open the door to economists, engineers, doctors, and retired civil servants. They would face confirmation and questioning in the assembly, but they would not need to be politicians. They would need to be competent.
But competence without accountability is just a clever person in a comfortable chair. For four decades, China has driven performance from its local officials through the Target Responsibility System — mubiao zerenzhi in Chinese. At the start of the year, an official signs a public contract with measurable targets. At year-end, the numbers decide: promote the top, transfer the bottom. No phone calls override the arithmetic. We are not importing China’s politics. We are borrowing its management tool.

A newly appointed Health Minister — say, a former hospital director — would sign a contract to cut infant mortality by a set percentage and ensure every rural health centre has a doctor present six days a week. Hit the targets, stay and earn a bonus. Miss them for two quarters, leave automatically. The scorecard is published every month. The data is audited independently. Fudge the numbers, and you are blacklisted for three years. When the cost of dishonesty is career death, honesty becomes the only rational choice.

Appointing outsiders without a performance system creates unelected cronies. A performance system without the ability to recruit outsiders is useless because the assembly pool simply does not contain enough qualified people. The two reforms are a pair of scissors: one blade finds the right people, the other cuts them if they fail.

A smaller province starts fresh. It has no legacy bureaucracy fighting reform and no decades-old patronage network to dismantle. It can write new rules from day one.

To every party that claims to support new provinces, demand this: include both reforms in the same constitutional package. Do not give the people a new province and the same broken cabinet. Give them a new province and a government that works. Appoint half the cabinet from outside the assembly. Sign the performance contracts on day one. Publish the scorecards every month. Let the people see whether a professional Health Minister with a numerical target delivers more than a political Health Minister with a vote bank.

If it works, we will have proven that governance is not about the size of the province, but about the quality of the people running it. If we do nothing — if we carve new provinces and simply replicate the old rules — we will have taken a historic opportunity and turned it into a historic disappointment. New maps on the wall. Old failures on the ground.

The people deserve better. Let us build provinces that are not just smaller, but smarter. Let us build them to work.