Once, Pakistan’s bureaucracy stood as a pillar of governance in the sixties, entrusted with the nation’s future. Today, that edifice is crumbling—its foundations weakened by decades of decay.

A recent statement by a politician stirred a bitter truth: for many of our senior bureaucrats, the journey after retirement leads not to think-tanks or the written memoirs of a service life, but to the comfortable shores of the West, where they live out their days in ease, far removed from the country they once swore to serve.

In other lands, retired civil servants continue to guide their nations—offering wisdom, shaping policy, preserving institutional memory. Our bureaucracy, particularly the Pakistan Administrative Services (PAS), erstwhile District Management Group (DMG), the elite (sic) of Central Superior Services (CSS), found themselves ensnared in a web of corruption, political interference, and hollow accountability.

One of the reasons is that officers of the PAS group serve as assistant and deputy commissioners (ACs and DCs). These posts, since the British Raj, give eminence, authority and financial power with extraordinary protocol. Yet these PAS officers get power, deal with land records, control over housing Authorities and the revenue system.

Patwari, a low-rank but “powerful” land revenue official responsible for maintaining land records, is considered among the most corrupt officials in Pakistan.

So these ACs or DCs also act as the controller of land revenues and record. So such bureaucrats who dealt with land records and Patwaris became hostages of the status quo. A tragic irony for a country called the “land of the pure”: while the world has embraced digitalization to curb errors, prevent malpractices, and ensure transparency, Pakistan still lags—its land records trapped in outdated, manual systems, managed by........

© Business Recorder