New Provinces and the Future of Governance in Pakistan

When a neighbourhood drain overflows, nobody calls for a new foreign policy. When garbage piles up outside a market, residents do not need another federal committee. They need somebody with the authority, money, and responsibility to solve the problem. Yet this most basic layer of government remains one of the weakest parts of Pakistan’s political system. Islamabad debates national strategy, provincial capitals control large budgets, while the institutions closest to ordinary citizens frequently operate with limited authority.

That arrangement makes less sense every year. Pakistan now has more than 241 million people, according to the 2023 census. Its cities are expanding, smaller urban centres are absorbing new populations, and public expectations are rising. At the same time, the latest household survey reports literacy of only 63 percent among people aged ten and above, while 28 percent of children between five and sixteen remain outside school. Problems of this scale cannot be managed efficiently from a few distant capitals.

Pakistan’s Constitution already recognises the principle. Article 140A requires provinces to establish local government systems and devolve political, administrative, and financial responsibility to elected representatives. The language is important because genuine local government requires all three. Elections without money produce powerless councils.

Money without administrative control produces dependency. Administrative responsibility without political accountability merely creates another bureaucracy.

The weakness has always been implementation. Local government systems have repeatedly been redesigned, delayed, dissolved, or replaced as political circumstances changed. Even in 2026, the Election Commission of Pakistan continues to publish different schedules, notifications, and processes for local elections across provinces and territories. The issue is not that elections never occur. It is that local democracy has struggled to acquire the continuity that national and provincial institutions largely take for granted.

Consider how government works from the perspective of a citizen. The services encountered most frequently are local. Streets need repairing. Waste needs collecting. Water networks require maintenance. Markets need regulation. Parks, transport, drainage, street lighting, land use, and neighbourhood planning all require daily decisions. These are not abstract matters. They determine whether a city is liveable.

Yet too many municipal institutions lack the freedom to plan for the long term. Decisions move upward through departments, development authorities, provincial ministries, and competing agencies. Responsibility becomes blurred. If nobody clearly owns a service, everybody can explain why somebody else failed to provide it. The UNDP decentralisation programme has focused precisely on strengthening subnational institutions, public service delivery, inclusion, and administrative capacity.

Pakistan’s difficulty is therefore not identifying the problem. It is making devolution permanent rather than occasional

There is evidence inside Pakistan that municipal capacity can improve. The Punjab Cities Program was designed to strengthen participating urban local governments in planning, resource management, transparency, and service delivery. A later World Bank assessment reported that the programme helped extend improved water and sanitation services while introducing municipal electronic governance systems and strengthening local revenue collection.

The next phase is even larger. The Punjab Inclusive Cities Program is expected to improve water, sanitation, hygiene, and drainage services for about 4.5 million people, with another two million benefiting from improved solid waste management. It covers sixteen secondary cities and explicitly seeks to strengthen local governments so that services remain sustainable. The lesson is worth noticing. Better municipalities are not a constitutional luxury. They can affect water, health, sanitation, revenue, and the quality of daily life.

The argument becomes more urgent because Pakistan’s population is increasingly concentrated in urban areas. The World Bank urban data tracks the continuing rise of the country’s urban population. That growth is changing the nature of governance. A village can sometimes survive poor planning for a while. A city of several million cannot. Traffic, housing, waste, pollution, water supply, land prices, transport, and disaster risks interact every day.

Research on Pakistan’s secondary cities found substantial economic potential alongside weak planning, inadequate housing, poor services, and growing environmental pressures. This matters beyond Lahore and Karachi. Cities such as Multan, Gujranwala, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Peshawar, Quetta, Abbottabad, and many others will carry an increasing share of Pakistan’s economic and demographic burden.

If their governments remain institutionally weak, urban growth will produce congestion before prosperity

Power without money is largely symbolic. A mayor who depends on a provincial department for every major expenditure cannot be held fully responsible for outcomes. Pakistan therefore needs serious fiscal devolution. Municipalities should receive predictable shares of provincial revenues while also being encouraged to strengthen legitimate local revenue sources. Property taxation, service fees, parking systems, municipal assets, and transparent licensing can provide resources when designed fairly.

The objective should not be to abandon poorer districts to their own tax bases. Fiscal equalisation remains essential because wealthy cities will always possess advantages unavailable to remote communities. The wider World Bank approach to urban development emphasises both stronger local governments and greater access to subnational finance. The principle is straightforward. Responsibilities should be accompanied by the resources required to fulfil them. Otherwise devolution becomes little more than the transfer of blame.

There is another benefit that Pakistan rarely discusses. Local democracy can produce better national politicians. A councillor who has dealt with waste collection, zoning disputes, school complaints, water shortages, budgets, and angry residents learns government differently from someone whose political career begins inside a provincial or national assembly.

Local office can become a training ground where leadership is tested against practical problems

It can also bring politics closer to people who rarely have access to national power. Women, younger candidates, professionals, minorities, community organisers, and representatives from smaller localities have a better chance of entering public life through functioning local institutions. UNDP work in Pakistan’s merged districts similarly links stronger local governance with improved access to essential public services in communities that have historically faced serious development challenges.

Pakistan does not need another temporary experiment in local democracy. It needs a settled constitutional and political understanding that elected local government is a permanent tier of the federation. Election dates should not depend on whether a provincial administration believes the timing is politically convenient. Councils should have defined terms, protected functions, professional staff, transparent accounts, and predictable finance.

The larger lesson is simple. A federation becomes stronger when citizens can solve more problems close to home. National government should handle genuinely national questions. Provinces should manage provincial responsibilities. Cities and districts should govern matters that are unmistakably local. Pakistan has spent decades debating how power should be divided at the top. Perhaps the next governance revolution should begin at the bottom.