Development 2.0--by Nadeem Ul Haque

People are totally confused about the economy.  One way of looking at the economy is that it is the aggregate of all economic decisions taken in a time period.  If the government is run on archaic principles  with poor  decision-making , don’t expect great outcomes for the economy. The process of human resource management in the government is at the heart of the slow growth in our economy. Think about it.  Let me give  you  some  food for thought. All appointments in Pakistan’s public sector are highly centralized. The refrain is that we cannot trust appointments to be decentralized  for there will be poor quality appointments and possible corruption. Hence the rationale for secretaries and bureaucrats to be on all governing bodies of public sector enterprises,  including   universities ,  think-tank’s  and other  non-profits . Meanwhile the principle accounting officer of all these bodies remains the secretary who does meddle and vitiate the authority of the board and the CEO.

Return to Magistracy A Distracted Bureaucracy In our adventures to find a viable political system, we have politicized the bureaucracy moving it away from its primary function—magistracy. Politically weak governments attempt to buy legitimacy through the delivery of projects and giveaways. Almost as a bribe — repeated governments claim “I cannot give you freedom and liberty but I will build dams, roads and railways!” And “I cannot give you security but I will build education.” And even there the dictates of the system lead to more building not more public service. Such agendas are supported by donors who too are in hurry to write those reports claiming “literacy has improved in my tenure”, “in my 3 years here, I have done three projects on clean water”, and “I financed a project for building a dam worth 20 billion.” Donors are dumping money on development projects to achieve these ephemeral goals for better economic development. Donor project are a godsend for