It is high time we got down to the nuts and bolts of devolution, dispensed with the intellectual calisthenics and stopped wandering through political mazes laid out by its crafty naysayers—particularly those whose monopolistic grip on power would be loosened by meaningful reform.

Pakistan has spent decades debating who should govern. It has devoted far less attention to the more consequential question: how should power be distributed so that government actually serves the governed?

Devolution is not another fashionable slogan, still less an academic indulgence. It is a democratic imperative and a practical response to governance failures that have outlived successive governments, parties and political arrangements. When a broken water main, an impassable road or a dysfunctional municipal service requires the intervention of a distant provincial authority, the problem is not merely inefficiency. It is a failure in the architecture of the state.

Our political discourse mistakes the transfer of power from Islamabad to provincial capitals for genuine devolution. Provincial autonomy is essential, but cannot justify replicating centralisation in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar or Quetta. Power has travelled, but not nearly far enough. The citizen remains a supplicant for services that should be delivered as a matter of right.

Article 140A of the Constitution was intended to change that equation. It requires each province, by law, to establish a local-government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to elected local representatives. Yet it does not itself define a secure minimum of functions, fiscal entitlements, administrative autonomy or institutional continuity. Much of the substance of devolution remains dependent on provincial legislation and political willingness.

Here lies the paradox of our half-finished democracy: local government is constitutionally recognised but remains subject to provincial control. Without authority over functions, personnel and predictable resources, elected councils become administrative subordinates rather than accountable democratic institutions.

Compare this with Article 160. The Constitution establishes the National Finance Commission and a framework for sharing resources between the federation and provinces, including........

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