A case for more provinces
There have been talks in the country for quite some time for forming a seraiki province in south of Punjab and a Hazara province in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
There exists a strong case for more provinces in the country if we look around at the world around us. Although Pakistan is the 6th most populous country and the 36th largest in terms of geographic area, it would rank 56th in a list of countries with most provinces (& im considering FATA as the 5th province). These countries include all of the most developed ones. On the other hand, ours is obviously the epitome of national mismanagement.
There are many reasons why there should be more provinces. One, as per the general rule of management, it is easier to administer if the whole is divided into homogenous parts which share the same characteristics. In large administrative units, it is more probable that an area of the province may get neglected in terms of its economic and development needs.
Moreover, having more provinces enables the devolution of power.
Besides the benefits of empowerment, division enables efficient use of resources. This is again similar to how in an organization, dividing the budget into more and more heads enables efficient utilization.
Lastly, having more provinces is better for national cohesion as the smaller entities would be weaker as compared to one large entity and would therefore find it difficult to secede in case it wants to; the power of the vested interests would get significantly diluted (a pessimist may look at this statement as a “divide and rule” policy, but just like a business organization’s ultimate objective is to maximize profit, a country’s ultimate objective is to maximize National Power and two important elements of national power are population and geographic area, so there’s no compromising on that).
As such, it only makes sense that we just keep our eyes open as to how the rest of the world is administering itself and simply “copy-paste” their successful administrative models. More units of administration with greater autonomy would go a long way in fixing us.
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