PAKISTAN rarely suffers from a failure to recognise its crises. Whether the problem lies in water, provincial administration, resource distribution, urban services or the widening distance between state and citizen, the warning signs usually appear well before the crisis becomes unavoidable. The deeper difficulty lies elsewhere: in moving from recognition to institutional change. We see what is changing around us, yet struggle to change the institutions through which we respond to it.

The debate over new administrative units illustrates this dilemma. The argument is that the existing provincial map no longer corresponds fully with changing populations, expanding cities and growing administrative needs. But a map is never merely a map. Behind its boundaries lie powers, resources, representation, political influence and constitutional arrangements. To redraw it,........

© Pakistan Observer