Bureaucracy can be stated as the system of government where the decisions are take by the state representatives. In his address to the civil officers in 1948, Quaid e Azam said “The services are the backbone of the state. Governments are formed. Governments are defeated. Prime Ministers come and go, Ministers come and go, but you have to stay on. Therefore, there is a very great responsibility placed on your shoulders. You should have no hand in supporting this political party or that political party, this political leader or that political leader. This is not your business.”
This is where the main problem in Pakistan's bureaucracy lies. The working of the bureaucracy should not be influenced by political parties or ideologies. It is supposed to maintain its independence and sovereignty. Pakistan adopted its centralized system of bureaucracy from British rule but was not able to adapt the system effectively according to the needs of the evolving state. This is why the bureaucracy in Pakistan is largely problematic and ineffective till today.
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But the bureaucracy does still stand today as the backbone of Pakistan. It's main role being "policy implementation", there is no question of eliminating political influence over it since the direction comes from the brain of the state, the government, that is supposed to formulate policies for the bureaucracy to impose. It is a servant to the ideologies of the government in power. That is a fact. So all that can be done is to eliminate any nepotism or corruption in policy implementation by making hiring and promotions within the civil service as transparent and on merit as possible so that political influence is undermined in the operations of the state.
We have often blamed bureaucracy to be the source of our national failures. Their corruption, nepotism and customary incompetence have often been a scourge on Pakistan. If the state has to provide services, administer justice, maintain law and order and bring about prosperity, and if it has to be effective, it has to have a good bureaucracy. Yet the bureaucracy in Pakistan remains so ill organised.
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