Bureaucracy is that the cluster
of skilled officers United Nations Agency performs rationalized functions in
massive scale organization, particularly government ones, so a company is
claimed to be bureaucratized once its procedures for action and decision have
become formalized and impersonal through elaborate rules that are
"public". The growth of modern government is been as intimately
tied to the development of bureaucracy, and no motion state could operate
without bureaucracy. The popular associate tithe sis between paperwork and
democracy is a rhetorical expression that endangers the longer term of
democracy, for a constitutional system that cannot function effectively, that
cannot act with dispatch and vigor, cannot alive. Fortunately, each nation and
also the Swiss and the British have shown that a good, accountable paperwork is
sort of compatible with second constitutionalism.
Bureaucracy is not only a privileged
oppressive group but a new exploiting class, a class characterized by a new
type of oligarchic regime k neither socialist nor capitalist and that is
rapidly spreading both in East and West.
Soviet bureaucracy
constituted a new ruling class that exploited the proletariat as much as the
capitalists had in the past. It differed from capitalism only in that the new
type of domination was based not an individual but on group ownership of the
means of production. In fact, in the Soviet system the means of production
represent not "socialism" but “socialism ". They do not belong
to the whole collectively but to the state old to the bureaucrats who control
it. In the last analysis, it is this bureaucratese the technicians, directors
and specialists holding key positions to the party and state administration -
whole exploit the proletarians and steal the surplus value of work. This new
type of regime called bureaucratic collectivism was not limited to the Soviet
Union. Similar tendencies could be discerned in fascist countries and even in
the "welfare hock" type of capitalist democracies.
The American philosopher and
critic James Burn ham says "Bureaucracy, a theory of the managerial
revolution", technological progress and the growth of large scale economic
as well as political bureaucracies deprived the old capitalist class of the
central of the means of production. The effective control of the economy and of
political power had passed to the managers - that is, to the production
executives and to the administrators of the state bureaucracy. He predicted
that at a large stage of development, private ownership would be abolished and
the bureaucrats would appropriate collectively, through the state, the means of
production. These managers would impose a new type of oligarchic order".
The French sociologist
Michel Crozier, says "Bureaucracy means fundamental exercise control on
the basis of knowledge. This is the feature of it which makes it specifically
rational; the social structure consists of highly cohesive occupational groups,
each presenting a unified and rather hostile front toward the others.
Corruption at all levels,
political as well as bureaucratic, is a fact of life in Pakistan that is eating
into the vitals of the country's economy. This reality has been affirmed by
independent studies carried out by reputable international agencies as
Transparency International (TI) which has classed Pakistan as the second most
corrupt country in the world after Nigeria.
It is universally recognized
that corruption always moves from top (politics) down (bureaucracy). This
implication is there even in the aforesaid remarks of the caretaker Prime
Minister Malik Meraj Khalid. His predecessor has been even more categorical in
insisting that in Pakistan in general, and during her regime in particular,
there has been hardly any corruption at the political level.
In support of her claim, the ousted PM
presented the evidence, that when the list of top defaulters was presented in
the National Assembly, 97 percent of them were not politicians, but
businessmen. No bureaucrats were, of course, identified in this rogues gallery
of bank defaulters.
Even the 3 percent share of
politicians in the rogues’ gallery is rather surprising, since in all civilized
countries, politicians and businessmen have been separated into at least formal
non-competing groups. That does not mean that politicians do not reap the rich
fruit of business. They do but do it through surrogate. Conversely, most big
politicians are surrogates of big business in developed countries.
As for the higher ratio (97
percent) of non-politicians among the top kink defaulters, the political
involvement of politicians must obviously be too high. Without effective big
politician interest, it is impossible in this country to secure big business
loans, deliberately with heavy under collateralization, that are hard to
recover, whatever stringent recovery laws are enforced.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. A bureaucracy becomes autonomous and exercise near absolute power
when the process of class formation is weak or when no class is dominant. This
is certainly not the case in Pakistan, where the feudal or landlord class still
retains dominant position. Once a class becomes dominant and retains its
dominance, the autonomy of bureaucracy ceases of exists and it becomes an
Instrument in the hands of the dominant class. Since the Pakistan bourgeoisie
is also now in the process of establishing its dominance, the Pakistani
bureaucracy will soon lose its autonomy and power still further.
Even when the position of
dominant classes in a society is fully crystallized, the need of bureaucracy,
civil and military, as junior partners in the crime of corruption still
remains.
Army officers are inducted in the civil
services and also appointed on lucrative posts in the civilian organizations
but had never been held accountable even if there were reports of corruption
against them. They are appointed as heads of public sector organization like
Pakistan Steel Mills, Pakistan ordinance Factories, Oil & Gas Development
Corporation, Water and Power Development Authority, Pakistan Telecommunication
Corporation, Sui Gas Company etc.; Military Procurement's have also
traditionally been notorious for kickbacks and commissions.
The President of our country
has been excluded from a accountability because of constitutional protection to
him under Article 248 (2), A similar immunity has also been extended to
provincial governor. Whatever the constitutional provision, the fact of the
President's wielding absolute power needs to be duly considered.
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