Zafar Hilaly

The impending revolution that we all await is how to make the bureaucracy, this vast and lugubrious machine, the servant of the public and user-friendly. That, surely, must be the foremost priority for any regime that wishes to be re-elected and for the clerks who work in it to be respected

Mr Nawaz Sharif’s hurt and anger at being let down by Mr Zardari is evident nowadays. Since Mr Zardari, like most politicians, does not believe in what he says, he was surprised that Mr Sharif did. Mr Sharif should have known better. A politician, like an acrobat, keeps his balance by saying the opposite of what he does, just like Mr Sharif did when in power.

Now and then, of course, one comes across a politician who is so beguiling, so plausible, so much a rose without a thorn that he takes everyone for a ride which, Mr Sharif wants us to believe, is why he was misled by Mr Zardari. But no one really buys this explanation. They know that Mr Zardari is no Hitler.

There is so much feigned and injured innocence about nowadays that even the Taliban are getting into the act following the arrests of their leaders in Pakistan. But no one is fooled. We know that man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he wants to eat until he eats them. Even as Mr Sharif’s parliamentarians were unanimously electing Mr Zardari the president, one sensed that they were silently baying for his blood.

Alas, two-timing is not the monopoly of politicians, even the obscenely poor vote repeatedly for the mind-boggling rich, notwithstanding irrefutable evidence that the latter prosper at their cost and then yell that they have been duped. Actually, rich or poor, educated or not, all suffer from such failings. It is human nature or, in the words of a Beatles song, all about “waiting at the window, wearing the face that one keeps in a jar by the door”.

The military, which after its years in politics qualifies as a political entity as much as a fighting arm of the state, has cleverly grasped the importance of pandering to human nature and has assigned a competent general to manage its image. His job is to develop public support for its operations. This he does effectively, of course, dissembling now and then, but that is a part of the craft of public relations.

The judiciary has also embraced this view. Justice, it believes, must not only be done and seen to be done, but appropriately explained and projected so that kudos can accrue. Good judgements are not enough; goodwill also counts. All very different from the old motto: “Let justice be done even if the world has to perish.”

It is only the floundering bureaucracy that has ignored the importance of good public relations, which is one reason why we have reached a stage where being called a ‘clerk’ unlike being called a ‘soldier’ or ‘judge’, though not a ‘politician’, is likened to abuse. The condescension and contempt the term ‘clerk’ conveys is galling. And as a former ‘clerk’, I have often wondered why the bureaucracy has never bothered to try and fix its image like the other arms of the state.

The appointment of an ombudsman seemed to be a move in this direction, but because the appointees were more frequently judges and bankers taking bureaucrats to task, it hardly helped. Besides, the idea emanated from a military ruler, hence we could scarcely take the credit for making amends for the loss, pain and suffering caused to the public on account of the negligence and laziness of fellow clerks.

The success or failure of a government’s policy depends to a large extent on the performance of the bureaucracy. ‘How to do it’, i.e. how to implement the government policy, is in the hands of the clerks; unfortunately they end up demonstrating ‘how not to do it’. A British MP once described the British civil service “as a beautifully designed and effective braking mechanism”, although it was created to achieve precisely the opposite result.

The impending revolution that we all await is how to make the bureaucracy, this vast and lugubrious machine, the servant of the public and user-friendly. That, surely, must be the foremost priority for any regime that wishes to be re-elected and for the clerks who work in it to be respected. But, remarkably, it is not on the agenda of either.

Commissions to reform the bureaucracy have been aplenty. The foreign office has had retired luminaries spending months churning out voluminous reports, to no avail. One of these reports was in such turgid prose that if reduced to tablet form and bottled, it would have rivalled Valium as a sleeping potion. Another, no doubt a masterpiece, never saw the light of day, because when the author took a month’s break from his labour, he forgot, while leaving office, to turn off the AC, which subsequently caused a fire, reducing his endeavours to ashes.

Apparently, a fresh report on improving the performance of the civil services has been completed and is awaiting implementation or ‘consideration’ of the government. If the former is the case, we should see some action in a century or so but if the latter, then perhaps in the next millennium.

While the new report is being considered, the one step that every department can take to speed up the process of decision making and thereby gain a measure of public goodwill would be to ensure that an ‘actionable’ letter or a file that ‘moves’ from one office or desk to another keeps ‘moving’ and does not come to rest in some cupboard or drawer.

A simple means of avoiding this fate, I once ventured to tell the top ‘clerk’ of Pakistan, would be not to have any cupboards or drawers in an office. I proceeded in this ‘revolutionary’ vein a while longer. My respected senior colleague heard me out, mouth agape, and left without saying a word. But his expression was unforgettable. “We are all born mad. Some remain so,” was what it conveyed.

Perhaps a more sensible measure that would greatly enhance efficiency and improve image, as I discovered, was for the head of the department to inform the public that those visiting to meet an official of the department should not wait more than five minutes and, thereafter, without so much as ‘by your leave’, walk into the office of the department head. In all the years I served as the ‘head clerk’ in different sub-offices of the foreign office, only once after this notice was prominently displayed at the entrance door did I have cause to upbraid a junior colleague for failing to adhere to it. The threat of an adverse entry in an officer’s performance report focuses his mind like nothing else.

Whatever the steps that the government and the bureaucracy finally embark on to improve their image, they would do well to remember that an inefficient and listless bureaucracy that cares nothing for its image is like corruption, as killing to a regime’s prospects as the canker to a rose.

The writer is a former ambassador. He can be reached at charles123it@hotmail.com