THE BUREAUCRATS:

By: Zafar Hilaly

Few bureaucracies enjoy a good reputation for efficiency, creativity or innovation. In

almost every country the bureaucracy is viewed poorly and bureaucrats are written
of disparagingly. Alas, much of the criticism is well deserved.

Bureaucrats are indeed rude, impatient, cruel, overbearing, hurried, ignorant,

indifferent to other people’s problems, insolent and corrupt. Only last week Punjab
police officials killed a dozen or so protesters. The fact is that politics, bribes,
friendships and favours dominate when it comes to recruitment, postings and
promotions in our bureaucracy. Merit, if it counts at all, is secondary.

For this reason our bureaucrats are rarely praised; and when they retire, or die, its
mostly good riddance. There are some rare exceptions. Qudratullah Shahab (1917-
1986) was one but that’s because his writings appealed to a vocal section of the
literati. It was nothing he did (or could do) as the federal information secretary.
Another was Agha Shahi (1920-2006) who has an Avenue (9th) in Islamabad named
after him, although few really know why; and for those who say they do, apparently
Agha Shahi’s considerable diplomatic prowess was not the main reason.

Anyway, if civil servants are to be rewarded by the naming of Islamabad’s roads

surely more than one of them in nearly seven decades deserves recognition. Frankly,
it’s just as well there is no such tradition. If that were so even the likes of Salman
Farooqi would have had a few cul de sacs in Islamabad named after them. For the
benefit of those who have not heard of Salman, in his very last incarnation Salman
Farooqi was the secretary general to the president (Zardari) and, it has to be said,
the duo worked hard to rectify the mistake that the civil service should comprise
men of integrity.

One civil servant who died (March 2013) relatively unnoticed was Ijlal Haider Zaidi.
Zaidi had a legion of admirers and, I suspect, as many, if not more, detractors. I was
among the former group but not for the usual reasons.

I admired Ijlal Zaidi for his Houdini-like skills. A close adviser and an unabashed
admirer of Ziaul Haq, Ijal Zaidi nevertheless managed to gain entry to the inner
sanctum of Benazir Bhutto’s advisers. No mean feat, considering her father had been
murdered by Zia; and as Zia’s defence secretary and then establishment secretary,
Ijlal Zaidi was a vital cog in the dictator’s administrative wheel. How did Zaidi do it?
And what persuaded BB to choose him as a key (domestic affairs) adviser?

Well, it wasn’t all Zaidi’s wizardry. The fact is that BB had a grudging respect for
former adversaries; and if they were prepared to eat crow and work for her she was
more than happy to take them on board. In fact, the greater their seeming
discomfiture, and the U-turn they were required to make, the more BB relished
having them at her beck and call.
Nor did BB have qualms about their loyalty. ‘If my vessel develops leaks they will
again jump ship, so what’? Meanwhile, she would use their proven talents to help
pick her way through the myriad shoals of Pakistani politics.

Of course, it helped that Ijlal Zaidi was the epitome of what a civil servant should be:
he understood more than he ever let on; he was courteous, metaphorical, allusive
and vague and slippery when he needed to be. He weighed his words carefully, never
raised his voice, measured his gestures and let nothing upset him.

As Ijlal Zaidi went up the civil service ladder he acquired a good reputation, but not
so good as to frighten others. He accumulated good postings (DG, Radio Pakistan)
but again not so good as to provoke envy until, of course, he hit the heights under
Zia but by then he was beyond the range of the guns of his peers.

Zaidi’s aims were to float, prosper and wield power. He did all three. If he had one
failing it was the difference between his personal thoughts and his beliefs and the
advice he proffered. But he was not really surprised or bothered by the discrepancy;
he placidly accepted it as one of the facts of life. He never allowed his private
intimate convictions to interfere with the business at hand. He was, for instance, not
a man to approve of tyrants but he went on to perform all the tasks Zia set him very
conscientiously.

I recall on one occasion, when BB and I disagreed, she asked me to consult Zaidi
and get back to her. “But, Prime Minister”, I remarked spontaneously, “he’ll only tell
me what you feel”. BB smiled and said, “Well, then we, and not you, would be right.”

On another occasion, thinking I would be able to draw him to my side, I complained

to Zaidi that Pakistan was paying a heavy price for BB’s forbearance and she should
insist that her instructions not to take sides in the civil war in Afghanistan had to be
followed. I showed him the note I was about to send BB on the subject.

Zaidi went through it carefully and asked only one question: “What makes you think
she wants to be obeyed?”

“You mean”, I said, “she’s given up trying to control foreign policy”.

Zaidi merely smiled and said nothing. He had hit the nail on its head. He had seen the
resistance in the fauj to some of BB’s moves and realised that so had BB; and that
she too had sensed it would be foolhardy to resist.

Whatever society may say or think about bureaucrats, the fact remains they have a
key role in our polity. It is the bureaucrats who classify and authorise; the people
whose stamp and signature is vital for survival. You cannot live without them and if
they are upset or feel so inclined they can, in the words of an English peer, ‘create a
difficulty for every solution’.

It’s best, therefore, that you accept the way that they work. Or else the bureaucratic
system can, of course, ‘mistakenly’ kill you. It’s nothing sinister – simply the usual
gremlins within the system. However, it can be a serious disadvantage if, like me,
you are expecting to receive a pension but are listed as dead.

Our malfunctioning bureaucracy has the advantage of making thousands of dead

electors making their posthumous opinions felt. The results in the recent elections in
Karachi reflected this phenomenon, giving one devoted son hope when told that his
dead father had personally come to vote for the MQM candidate in ‘halka’ 250.

More seriously though, there are three distinguishing features about bureaucracy in
Pakistan today, and all are bad.

First, the tendencies of our political leaders, who are mostly tycoons, to incorporate
the state into their business empires, as a result bureaucrats are considered their
personal and not public servants. Second, business and criminal elements have
become institutionally entwined with the bureaucracy and together they have
become instrumental in transforming Pakistan into a vast kleptocracy.

Finally, whenever an expansion in the bureaucracy takes place it is not to provide

additional services to the public but only to provide jobs and increase the size of the
ruling party’s grateful clientele. Hyderabad has scores of educated street cleaners
belonging to one political party. The trouble is that they don’t turn up for work, but
they do utilise the perks government service provides.

The writer is a former ambassador