Pakistan is going to be divided into ‘pieces’! There was a stir in the country as soon as this blueprint was leaked.

Pakistan Political Crisis: The debate regarding reorganization of provinces in Pakistan has once again intensified. Communications Minister Abdul Aleem Khan announced on Sunday that small new provinces will definitely be created in the country. They claim that this will increase administrative efficiency and improve the delivery of government services. But many experts call this alleged improvement a new crisis for the country.

After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, Pakistan had five provinces, namely East Bengal, West Punjab, Sindh, North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan. After the liberation war of 1971, East Bengal became independent and became Bangladesh. After this, the name of NWFP was changed to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan remained the same.

Government will break these provinces

Now, when both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan are battling separatist movements, Pakistan’s ‘hybrid government’ Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir are moving towards dividing these provinces into smaller parts.

Smaller provinces, better governance

According to local media reports, Aleem Khan has said that Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan will be divided into three provinces each. He says that compared to neighboring countries, the number of administrative units in Pakistan is very less and smaller provinces will ensure better control. Aleem Khan’s Istehkaam-e-Pakistan party is part of the Shahbaz Sharif government. But the biggest opposition is coming from Sindh.

PPP has been opposing the division of Sindh for a long time. Recently, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah had clearly warned that the party will not accept any kind of division.

The problem is not the number of provinces.

According to former bureaucrat Syed Akhtar Ali Shah, division of provinces is a sensitive issue and requires a thorough constitutional and historical review. They say that Pakistan had done many administrative experiments in the past too, be it Ayub Khan’s two-province model or the Basic Democracy System, but these experiments did not improve the conditions.

He says that the real problems of Pakistan are weak institutions, uneven law and order and ineffective local governance. Creating new provinces will not reduce these problems, but may further increase administrative inequality.

Ahmed Bilal Mehboob warned

Similarly, Ahmed Bilal Mahboob, president of think tank PILDAT, has also warned that building new infrastructure could be extremely expensive and politically destabilizing. He wrote that the solution lies not in division of large provinces, but in giving powers to local bodies which have been neglected for decades in Pakistan.

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Will the new provinces worsen the situation?

Experts are almost unanimous in their opinion that if Pakistan does not strengthen its administrative structure and make local governance effective, increasing the number of provinces could worsen the country’s existing challenges. At a time when Pakistan is struggling with internal security crisis and economic instability, this step can create new problems instead of relief for the country.