The establishment wants to redraw the map. Pakistan's crisis was never about the map.

 Mohsin Naqvi has given an old idea a new sales pitch. Speaking at the Pakistan Economic Summit in Islamabad on July 30, the interior minister said Pakistan's governance system has collapsed. He said it cannot be fixed without new provinces. Ordinary people need jobs and basic services, he said, and the current system cannot deliver either. His warning was blunt: without drastic change, he said, we will be having this same conversation ten years from now.

Within days, others jumped in. Abdul Aleem Khan, a federal minister and head of the IPP, called for splitting each of Pakistan's four provinces into three. MQM-P leaders Farooq Sattar and Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui backed the idea. Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi supported it too, though with caution. Mustafa Kamal, who has pushed for years for a separate Karachi or Sindh province, called it vindication. Even the army's spokesman, DG ISPR, weighed in. He noted that Pakistan's population has grown many times over since 1972 while the number of provinces has stayed the same, and said the current setup deserves a fresh look. He was careful to add that any such decision is for elected leaders to make, not the army.

The noise around this debate should not be confused with substance. Pakistan's crisis is not about geography. It is about how power works. The country keeps concentrating wealth and privilege in the hands of a few networks. The result is weak growth, weak institutions, weak schools, and weak governance. New provinces would mean new capitals, new assemblies, new chief ministers, new bureaucracies. None of that makes the state more capable.

In fact, without real reform, it could simply give the same elites more turf to fight over. Some critics are already saying this out loud. More provinces mean more government departments, more official homes, more senior posts, and more protocol and security for officials. Somebody has to pay for all of that. It will likely be the taxpayer.

The timing matters too. Pakistan's biggest threat today is not military. It is economic. A country that cannot educate its children, collect enough tax, grow its exports, or attract real investment will eventually find its security at risk too, no matter how many missiles or divisions it has. Economic weakness has become a national security problem.

But instead of fixing the real causes of decline, Pakistan's rulers keep reaching for shortcuts. Over the decades the fix has been a military government, a technocratic government, a national government, a government of experts, constitutional tinkering, local government reform, presidential rule, parliamentary rule, accountability drives, court activism, privatization, nationalization, administrative restructuring. Now it is new provinces.

The labels change. The results don't. The reason is........

© The Friday Times