IN an earlier column on these pages, ‘Inefficient by design’, I had argued that many of Pakistan’s economic distortions persist not because policymakers misunderstand their costs, but because they benefit groups capable of defending them. That argument raises a further question: what institutional machinery sustains this distribution of benefits? One answer is the bureaucracy.

The answer begins with bureaucracy’s origins. The British did not construct the colonial administrative state to maximise productivity or deliver public services. Its primary tasks were revenue collection, territorial control, and political order. The district collector embodied this design: an appointed officer with extensive executive and revenue powers, answerable to the colonial government rather than the people he governed. Information flowed upwards; instructions flowed downwards. Concentrating authority in a small administrative elite allowed the British to govern a vast population at relatively low cost.

Much of this design survived independence. Pakistan and India retained powerful generalist civil services recruited through competitive examinations. These may identify intelligence and diligence, but they cannot establish expertise in public finance, urban management, health systems, industrial policy, or digital regulation. Yet the governing assumption remains that success in a single examination, followed by general training, prepares an officer to move across such specialised fields, often supervising professionals who have spent their careers working in them.

This is not an........

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