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Members’ Perceptions of the District Management Group inthe federal civil services of Pakistan

By Syed A. Akif

and Richard C. Pratt

ABSTRACT:

[This paper has been adapted from a larger study entitled “Members’ and OpinionLeaders’ Perceptions of the Pakistani Federal Civil Services’ District ManagementGroup” undertaken as the Capstone Project submitted for completion of the MPA degreeat the University of Hawaii, USA. The actual study was carried out from August 1999onwards.]

The District Management Group (DMG) is generally considered to bethe most prestigious of the numerous civil service “occupational groups” inPakistan. Even now, in a period which is generally considered to be one of decline for the civil services,

more than 80 percent of the candidates in theannual competitive examination opt for DMG as their first choice.

This study was carried out through a 80-item questionnaire distributed to107 DMG officers (and a 50-item common version sent out to 67 OpinionLeaders.) The primary aim of this survey was to ascertain stakeholders’views of the DMG on a wide range of issues, both those directly related toDMG as well as those of more general interest relating to governance issuesincluding the following:1.Pakistani governance and DMG: the present and future status of bureaucracy.2.Pakistani attitudes, especially those of civil servants, towards democracy,rule of law, national problems.3.Empowered local government, decentralization and role of civil servantsas agents of change in the Pakistani public administration.4.Relations between elected officials and civil servants – degree of political interference/ cronyism - and their impact on bureaucraticcompetence levels.5.Reform in DMG; change of DMG nomenclature.6.Civil services’ selection, the “ merit vs. quota” debate, contractualemployment and other issues in civil service recruitment.7.Gender issues in the civil services.

8.Corruption: what is it; how bad is it; why is it there; improvements.9.Officers’ reasons for joining; job satisfaction levels; postings; politicalnetworks.10.Training: access; quality; and recommendations for the future11.Performance evaluation and promotions.This paper summarizes the views of 60 DMG officers serving in the province of Sindh (both in the federal and provincial governments) in grades17 through 21 as elicited through the above referred questionnaire. Theviews of the “Opinion Leaders” as well as a comparison between the twogroups are available in the complete paper, which is the believed to be thefirst quantitative study of the Pakistani bureaucracy.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1.What is this study about and why is it important?

For over one hundred years, the District Management Group (DMG), and its legal predecessors, the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) and the Indian Civil Service (ICS),have been considered to be the most powerful government structures amongst the variousservice/functional groups of the higher bureaucracy in Pakistan.

Indeed, most of theolder writers on the subject [Philip Woodruff, Ralph Braibanti, Frank Goodnow] havecalled these officers to be “the heaven-born,” “the kept class,” and the “Brahmins of theBureaucracy” while the Indian Civil Service (or ICS), the predecessor of the CSP/DMG,was itself called the “Steel Frame on Which India Rested” or the “GoverningCorporation.” Indeed, the administration of Imperial India’s 500 million people was, for the most part, entrusted to a few hundred ICS Officers and their police counterparts in theIPS, whose philosophical basis was in the combination of elitist roots which went back toPlato’s Republic and imperial origins in Confucian China. As a reminder of the latter, thecivil services’ cricket club in Lahore continues to be fondly named, “The Mandarins.”As of June 1999, the 716 members of the DMG occupied some of the most prestigious and powerful jobs in Pakistani government employment sector, reported to beclose to three million strong. Charles Kennedy in his book

Bureaucracy in Pakistan

[1987] notes that DMG was the first choice of nearly 70 percent of all civil service

probationers (training at the Academy) during the “post-Reform” period of 1974-81.

This was itself down from the first-preference rating for the DMG’s lineal predecessor,the CSP, which stood at 83 percent in 1971.

According to figures specially madeavailable for this study by the Federal Public Service Commission, the percentage of candidates qualifying the annual Competitive Examination who opted for DMG in the1998 examination as their first choice stood at 82.4% for males and 80% for femalecandidates.While the DMG continues to be an organization of great public significance,objective research on its role, especially the difference between the way its role(s) is/are perceived by outside observers and actually experienced by the officers themselves, hasnot been undertaken. Indeed, in spite of the DMG deserving serious inquiry, it isremarkable and surprising that no scholarly research is available on the subject, let alonea quantitative one, in spite of DMG being in existence for 27 years. This study wasundertaken to fill a vital gap by ascertaining the validity of perceptions of the DMGexpressed in the media, by opinion leaders and in DMG professional circles. Another factthat makes this study important is the coincidence that the topics addressed hereincomprise some of the main points of the new military regime’s agenda: reforming bureaucracy, revamping local government, addressing gender imbalance, and fightingcorruption.

How was this study undertaken?

This study was carried out through an 80-item questionnaire distributed to 107 DMGofficers and a 50-item version sent out to 67 Opinion Leaders. The figure for DMGofficers represents virtually the total number of DMG officers in the province (as only 8officers could not be contacted as they were on long leaves/ on suspension and in onecase a “proclaimed absconder”.) The actual questionnaire appears at the end of this paper. Of the 174 questionnaires distributed ninety (90) responses were received in time:60 from DMG officers and 30 from Opinion Leaders. Due to time and resourceconstraints, the population from which the DMG Officers' sample was to be drawn wasrestricted to a sample of convenience in the Province of Sindh. The questionnaires were