Reforms in Pakistan’s Civil Service

Mediocrity has become the hallmark of Pakistan’s civil service. Maladies are rampant and numerous
ranging from stupor, ineptitude, underperformance to misconduct.
In the beginning of June, Civil Service Reforms supremo Dr Ishrat Hussain revealed to the media the
reform agenda the incumbent government carries for Pakistan’s civil service. The major focus of
Hussain’s talk was on the bureaucratic structure and system to undergo transformation. The gamut of
emphasis was from induction, recruitment, training, performance, promotion, salary, compensation,
and retirement to institution building, devolution, accountability and service delivery.
The fallacy driving Hussain is that the mode of induction can be improved to add substance to the
reform agenda. Hussain refuses to see the pre-induction state of affairs run by the Federal Public
Service Commission (FPSC), which conducts a yearly examination of Central Superior Services (CSS)
for recruitment in Basic Pay Scale 17. If the induction process is flawed, recruitment cannot
contribute to the reform agenda. In the heart of the recruitment process lies the FPSC, without
reforming which the whole superstructure of reforms in Pakistan’s civil service would be redundant.
On 17 June, the FPSC declared the final result of CSS-2019. If Hussain should bother to pick up and
read English essays of first ten successful candidates to fathom the quality of induction, he Hussain
should see to what extent the essays bore a shred of originality, to what extent the essays were
relevant to the topics asked, and to what extent the essays expressed analysis. Hussain would find the
top ten successful candidates attempting one of three essays: (a) New war fronts lie in economic
zones, (b) Democracy and illiteracy do not move together, and (c) Expanding information
technology: a curse or blessing. The reason is that the FPSC is infatuated with a few topics such as
education, poverty, illiteracy, population, feminism, women rights, corruption, democracy, terrorism,
energy crisis, global warming, social media, and the CPEC. These are oft-repeated topics and these are
anybody’s guess.
On these topics are existing now generational essays loaded with quotations and statistics to dupe an
examiner into believing that the candidate has produced a high quality original essay. Generational
essays are the essays that travel from father to son and from an elder brother and sister to younger
ones. A variation is also the manufactured essays that teachers hand down to their pupils every year
gilded with the lofty claims of a hundred percent guarantee of success.

On the part of candidates appearing for the examination, the only trick required is to shuffle adroitly
the points and statistics given in these generational and manufactured essays to produce a desired
stuff to show as if the candidate had spent months to gather the expressed knowledge. The moment
the essay-checker is tricked into believing the pretense, the task is accomplished. This is how the
FPSC is a main agency of recruiting the candidates who not only rely on rote learning, but who also
know how to dupe an examiner. The successful candidates are considered the cream of Pakistan– the
cream that cannot write an original essay to produce new knowledge and the cream that relies on the
cramming and regurgitation of knowledge. When this cream is permitted to run the administrative
affairs of the country, no reform can yield results. Reforms are bound to founder on the ailing
decrepit system that the FPSC erects every year.
In principle, the purpose of examining an essay, as a compulsory subject, is to see if a candidate has
developed an ability to produce original new knowledge in an organized convincing manner
entailing a plausible conclusion. That is it. When this objective collapses, the whole idea of
conducting the examination of an English essay is defeated.
In the past few years, it has been observed that some officials of the FPSC whisper in the ears of the
heads of certain CSS coaching academies the best guess on English essays. Mostly CSS coaching
academies running businesses in Islamabad and Lahore avail themselves of this privilege. Similarly, to
these academies the names of head examiners setting papers for compulsory and optional subjects are
leaked. The leakage helps the recipients guess the preferred area of the examiner to ask questions
from and the way answers should be constructed.
Hussain does not know that the FPSC is lax to the connections of its officials with CSS coaching
academies. For instance, the FPSC made the latest changes in the CSS syllabus in 2016. With that, a
chain of favouritism burgeoned. Writers and book publishers with right connections got their books
approved by the FPSC to be included in the recommended book list for compulsory and optional
subjects. Similarly, a book publisher got its magazine recommended by the FPSC as the FPSC-
approved official magazine for CSS candidates. Reportedly, three FPSC officials were monetarily
compensated for extending this favour. Nobody knows what criterion of inclusion or exclusion the
FPSC established for selecting a book or a magazine for recommendation.
Hussain should also be interested in understanding the reason for the CSS candidates with a degree
from either Lahore University of Management Sciences or Lahore School of Economics opting for the
subject of Punjabi. When a member of the English chirping class opts for Punjabi in the CSS
examination, there must be some science to it. The answer, however, is simple. Like other regional
languages, Punjabi holds the potential for giving more than 80 percent marks which create a world of
difference when an average optional subject is oozing out 60 percent marks. It is not known what
role any excellence in Punjabi plays in the official and professional development of a civil servant,
other than offering a hoist to ratchet up overall marks of the candidate. Hussain should tell the nation
the way any brilliance in regional languages contributes to the construction of careers of civil
servants.
The base line is simple: Pakistan’s civil service has been faltering to provide effective governance and
sound public services. The FPSC is a partner in crime. Without reforming the examination system of
the FPSC, no induction is fruitful and no reform agenda is effective.