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Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan: The

1960s and 1970s Revisited

ILHAN NIAZ

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society / FirstView Article / October 2013, pp 1 - 17

DOI: 10.1017/S1356186313000631, Published online: 17 October 2013

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1356186313000631

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ILHAN NIAZ Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan: The 1960s and 1970s Revisited.
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 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan:
The 1960s and 1970s Revisited

∗
ILHAN NIAZ

Abstract

The present paper examines the growth of corruption in Pakistan in the 1960s and 1970s with particular
emphasis on the factors that influenced changes in the behavioural norms of the officer cadres or higher
bureaucracy of Pakistan. The main argument is that during the 1960s increases in development spending
and the manipulation of local governments by civil servants to help the Ayub Khan military regime
secure legitimacy led to a substantial increase in the level of corruption. However, while the increase was
alarming, the higher bureaucracy was still fairly clean and, given leadership, training and resources, in a
position to contain the spread of corruption. In the 1970s the first Pakistan People’s Party government
enacted a number of reforms aimed at asserting political control over the civilian bureaucracy while
pursuing a socialistic development model that justified nationalisation of industrial and commercial
assets. These substantially undermined the ability of the higher bureaucracy to fight back against
corruption while dramatically increasing state penetration of society and the economy, thus making
opportunities for corruption more abundant. After General Zia-ul Haq’s military coup in July 1977,
the new regime, though it received plenty of good advice, was not interested in enhancing the autonomy
and prestige of the services as that would diminish Zia’s personal power over the state apparatus.

Introduction

For Pakistan’s citizens the breakdown of their country’s state machinery is a painful and
tangible reality that exists independently of global rankings1 and foreign prognostications.2
This breakdown is widespread and felt keenly in the ability of the state to maintain order and

∗ Ilhan Niaz is Assistant Professor of History at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan
(in1980@qau.edu.pk).
1 A prominent global ranking is the Failed State Index prepared by Foreign Policy quarterly and the Fund for
Peace. In the 2011 rankings, out of 60 vulnerable states evaluated on the basis of a basket of factors (demographic
pressures, refugees, human rights, security machinery, elite factionalism, uneven socioeconomic development,
foreign military intervention, etc.), Pakistan emerges as the 12th most vulnerable state. This places Pakistan in the
same league as Nigeria and Kenya. There are obvious problems with the rankings – Pakistan is much better off
than countries like Nepal that manage to secure a better rank (27), but the truly disturbing factor is most of the
countries score very close to each other (in the range of 90–110, the higher the score the more vulnerable the state
in question). The Failed State Index can be viewed online: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/17/
2011 failed states index interactive map and rankings (accessed 5 December 2011).
2 One future projection that is making the rounds these days in Pakistan is Stephen P. Cohen, The Future of
Pakistan (Washington DC, 2011). It can be downloaded from http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/
BROOKINGS TheFutureofPakistan.pdf (accessed 5 December 2011).

JRAS, Series 3, page 1 of 17 

C The Royal Asiatic Society 2013

doi:10.1017/S1356186313000631
2 Ilhan Niaz

collect taxes – the two basic functions that states need to perform to maintain their domestic
presence and credibility. It is highly visible and garners considerable internal media attention
when it comes to the failure of the state to manage key services, such as the once proud
Pakistan Railways or Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the ill-considered Pakistan Steel
Mills and the ongoing power crisis with its circular debt and outages of electricity and natural
gas. Public sector health and education, long starved of material and human resources, are
managerially deficient with reckless policies of expansion in quantity stretching an already
fragile base. The writ of the state, if defined as the ability of the state apparatus to manage
itself and interact with society in accordance with its own legal framework, is practically
non-existent. Even from a pre-modern perspective, the personal writ of the ruler barely
operates outside of individual instances of self-aggrandisement. Pakistan as a country, rather
than being protected and guided by its political, bureaucratic, military and corporate elites,
is subjected to massive internal plunder, much of it institutionalised.3 Unless this plunder is
contained there is a grave and escalating danger that Pakistan may soon become a country
without a state in the administrative sense.
The plunder of Pakistan’s wealth and institutional capital by predatory and self-seeking
elites is daily exposed and lamented by the intelligentsia with the media and civil society
playing a particularly vocal role. The perception is that that corruption goes all the way to the
top of political and administrative hierarchies. Even though corruption is widely condemned
and many instances are brought to public attention, the extent of the phenomenon is such
that those genuinely keen to curtail it have long despaired, while most (and here one
includes the middleclass and professionals) treat it as a fact of life that carries little or no
negative consequences for socialisation and career advancement. Pakistan’s media and civil
society, which release more energy than the ailing power sector and are even more arbitrarily
managed than the state they criticise, have poor internal accountability, lack professionalism,
and are ill-trained to make meaningful contributions to efforts to reduce corruption. At the
political level, successive governments used allegations of corruption against rivals leading
to the initiation of thousands of cases that, though they led to few convictions, helped
undermine the credibility of the political class and demonstrated the incompetence of the
investigating and prosecution agencies.
A basic issue in the study of corruption in Pakistan is identifying when the phenomenon
started to become widespread and entrenched in the higher echelons of the state apparatus,
particularly the civilian bureaucracy’s officer cadres. This exercise in epidemiology will be
helped if a definition that corresponds to Pakistan’s historical experience of governance is
framed. The major sources of information and insight for this study are the Government of
Pakistan’s own declassified reports and records, and it is hoped that by sharing the intellectual
substance of these sources the debate about Pakistan’s crisis of state can be better informed
with reference to the role of corruption therein.

3 In the 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index prepared by Transparency International to rank countries by perceived
public sector corruption, Pakistan’s rank is 134/183, with a score of 2.5 (the lower the score, the more corrupt a
country is perceived to be), placing it in the same league as Niger and Sierra Leone. One point to note is that for
more than half the countries on the list, the differences in score are negligible, clearly an indication that corruption
is a global problem. See http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/ (accessed 11 September 2013).
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 3

Defining Corruption in Pakistan

Defining corruption from a Pakistani perspective is problematic due to the region’s historical
experience of governance. South Asian empires and state formations, whether large or small,
were typically estates of their rulers. The ruler of each state, as the universal proprietor,
alienated a share of the country’s wealth to maintain hierarchies of servants. These servants
included soldiers, scribes, priests and spies, and exercised power on the ruler’s behalf and in
his name. Upon dismissal or death – the two often being synonymous – the wealth of the
servant reverted to the master who decided how to dispose of it. In this system, therefore, the
ruler could not in principle be fiscally corrupt since the wealth of the country was his to do
with as he pleased.4 One could hardly accuse the ruler of stealing from himself. A wise ruler
was one who moderated his whimsicality and desire for personal enrichment and shared his
wealth judiciously with his servants and subjects.5 Coups and rebellions would still occur but
a modicum of enlightened self-interested on part of the ruler ensured that enough of the state
apparatus, particularly the military, stayed loyal. Such wise rulers, however, were exceptions
and the norm was that the rulers and their servants enriched themselves to the point where
widespread rebellion and chaos, often accompanied by foreign invasion, became inevitable.
The tendency of all rulers, wise and unwise, was to spend large amounts of money on
monumental construction, conspicuous consumption for the state elite, perpetual warfare,
and political intrigues.6 In the South Asian tradition of arbitrary and personalised governance,
corruption involved, from the ruler’s perspective, the imperial servants intercepting a greater
share of the ruler’s wealth than was owed to them under the terms of their employment.7
From society’s perspective, corruption was when the ruler through his officers took so much
wealth from the subjects that people had no choice but to rebel, flee or make a desperate

4 For a penetrating study of property relations in South Asia see Hirashima Shigemochi, The Structure of Disparity
in Developing Agriculture: A Case Study of the Pakistan Punjab (Tokyo, 1978). Hirashima draws a distinction between
control of the land and ownership in the Western sense of the term. The state in South Asia recognised occupancy
in exchange for payment of rent to the ruler and his servants, the latter owing the ruler administrative and military
service. Failure to meet the demands of the ruler resulted in dispossession while refusal on part of the peasants to
cultivate the land was severely punished. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
5 The Mughals thus drew a distinction between a “true” monarch who exercised restraint towards his subjects
out of enlightened self-interest and a “selfish” ruler who did not practise self-restraint leading to excessive oppression
and expropriation of the country’s wealth. Abu’l Fazl Allami, A’in-i Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann (Calcutta, 1873;
reprint, Lahore, 2003).
6 For a blistering classical account of corruption in Imperial Rome see Tacitus, The Annals: The Reigns of
Tiberius, Claudius and Nero, trans. J. C. Yardley (Oxford, 2008). A favoured method of securing another’s property
was to accuse them of treason, something that Tiberius was quite happy to do to his real and imagined enemies.
Ibid., p. 104. A practice designed to uncover the hidden wealth of those fallen from favour was to torture their
slaves and servants. Ibid., p. 130. To further this process Tiberius relied increasingly on “the informers, a class of
men devised for the destruction of society, and never sufficiently checked by legal penalties” who “were now being
given the inducement of rewards”. Ibid., p. 152.
7 Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London,
2000), articulates a theory of arbitrary rule with reference to the Persian historical experience of governance.
Often such instances affected relationships within the royal family: “Nevertheless, it is extremely instructive that
Naser-al-Din Shah – who was by no means the worst example of an arbitrary ruler of Iran – almost withdrew the
right of succession from his son and heir-designate, Mozaffar-al-Din Mirza (the governor general of Azerbaijan)
and sold it to his other son, Zel al-Soltan, the governor general of Isfahan. He wrote to the former that the latter
had offered him [one million tomans] for the position. Zel was well known both for his shrewdness and lack of
scruple. Mozaffar was lucky, therefore, that in reply to his father the Shah, his able secretary, Amir Nagan Garrusi,
warned that Zel might well spend another [five million tomans] for the Shah’s position itself”. Ibid., p. 9.
4 Ilhan Niaz

appeal to the ruler to restrain his servants.8 In case of rebellion or flight, the ruler and
his servants expropriated the wealth of the dissatisfied elements while, in case of appeal to
the sovereign, errant officers might be punished and their ill-gotten wealth confiscated and
added to the royal treasury.9
Under South Asia’s pre-British governance a high rate of corruption was inevitable. The
ruler’s arbitrary power made his servants insecure and encouraged them to plunder as much
as possible as quickly as possible. Checking their plunder required surveillance and making
examples of those who fell from favour by confiscating their wealth. Using arbitrary power
to curb the ill-effects of arbitrary power, however, had its limits and even the most skilled
administrators were compelled to concede that it was impossible to prevent the ruler’s servants
from cheating him.10 The use of spies to detect theft of the ruler’s wealth and the elimination
of officers against whom complaints were received and acted upon also served to confiscate
wealth and put it in the hands of the ruler rather than those from whose possession it was
originally looted.11
The advent of the British Raj in India gradually led to some important changes in
the organising principles of the state, the relationship between the imperial power and its
servants, and the interactive framework of state and society. For the present purposes a few
of these changes that affected state and social perceptions of corruptions merit mention.
First, the country ceased to be the estate of the ruler leading to the emergence of private
property and autonomous social and political organisations. Second, the higher levels of
the state apparatus were steadily converted into meritocracies enjoying security of service
and, in practical terms, security of tenure. Third, the higher levels of the bureaucracy were
given considerable power over the middle and lower levels that remained predominantly
Indian. Fourth, officers were required to base their decisions on laws that the ruler could
not arbitrarily change and whose application could be challenged in autonomous courts
of law. Fifth, the state was civilianised and the military institutions isolated from the rest
of society and subordinated to civilian bureaucratic control. Finally, in the first half of the
twentieth century, constitutional and political reforms intended to provide a measure of
self-government to British India were complemented by the Indianisation of the All-India
Services (AIS) and the officer corps of the Indian military.

8 In Tsarist Russia, as in present-day Russia, corruption in the form of bribery and abuse of power, was
endemic. Part of the motivation to steal and abuse came from the precarious position of the service nobility for
there were no autonomous institutions capable of lawfully resisting the Tsar’s “highly personalised rule” that treated
the country and “its subjects as its property”. Alexander Chubarov, The Fragile Empire: A History of Imperial Russia
(New York, 1999), pp. 14–15.
9 In the case of the Mughals the practice seems to have been that in case of rebellion one-fifth of the confiscated
wealth of the rebels went to the emperor and the rest was kept by the officers. Abu’l Fazl, Ain’i-Akbari, p. 572.
10 For examples see Kautilya, The Arthashastra, trans. L. N. Rangarajan (New Delhi, 1992), pp. 294–303. Kautilya
elaborates some forty ways in which the servants of the state can cheat the ruler, the ruler’s subjects and each other,
and prescribes punishments for those engaged in such activities.
11 This was not unique to Indian empires. Procopius’s The Secret History chronicles numerous instances of spies
and informers being used, as they had been in Imperial Rome, by Justinian and Theodora, to lay their hands on
the wealth of others: “On all moveable property and on the most attractive estate properties they laid their hands
just as they fancied, but they set aside those which were liable to oppressive and crushing taxation, and with sham
generosity returned them to their previous owners. These people in consequence were throttled by tax collectors
and reduced to penury by the ever-mounting interest on their debts, and thus unwillingly dragged out a miserable
existence that was no more than a lingering death”. Procopius, The Secret History, trans. G. A. Williamson and Peter
Sarris (London, 2007), p. 51.
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 5

The British effort to create a synthesis between the state morality envisioned by the
Enlightenment and realised in part in Britain on the one hand and the state morality of the
arbitrary bureaucratic empires of the South Asian tradition on the other was only partially
successful. By most accounts, the apex level, or Class I, of the bureaucracy was notable
for its integrity, adherence to law and merit orientation. At the middle levels, there was
a weakening of integrity but proximity to the officer class kept discipline fairly high. At
the lower levels, petty harassment, “nepotism” and “jobbery” were contained primarily by
fear of the officers but remained serious concerns.12 At the officer and senior support staff
levels the British were quite successful in instilling a special sensitivity to corruption as they
understood it and had tried to export to India. This sensitivity had five major components
and can be used as a definitional reference point to assess corruption in Pakistan’s higher
bureaucracy.13
First, the idea that it was wrong to take a bribe or accept lavish gifts from the subject
population or acquire a pecuniary interest in exercising official powers one way or another,
was drilled into the officer class and from there served as an example for support personnel
and society at large. This idea cuts at the heart of the South Asian tradition of governance
wherein it was expected that subjects would bribe officers or give then gifts in exchange
for favourable consideration. The officers in turn engaged in extensive gift exchange with
each other with the ruler normally setting the standard for lavishing wealth on giving and
receiving gifts.
Second, the principle that the servants of the state are servants of the law and have a duty
to uphold the law even if it conflicts with the wishes of the powerful for that law is the writ
of the state, was made operative through the officer class of the civilian bureaucracy and the
judiciary. This principle is diametrically opposed to the South Asian understanding in which
“the law” had no meaning independent of the wishes of the powerful in general and the
ruler in particular. The duty of the servant was to implement the ruler’s wishes regardless
of whether they contradicted the regulations passed by the sovereign or wishes expressed
earlier. The law could change every time the ruler changed his mind.
Third, officers and their families were to refrain from acquiring land or commercial
wealth within their jurisdictions or create even the appearance of impropriety through
perceived conflicts of interest. This was very different from the South Asian approach in
which members of the military and bureaucracy used and abused their powers to extend
their patronage networks into trade and agriculture and openly identified with factions based
on race, caste, and/or religious affiliation.14

12 Mohammad Ali Jinnah, in his 11 August 1947 Address to the Constituent Assembly, highlights the menace
of such practices. For the full text online see http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/constituent address
11aug1947.html (accessed 11 September 2013).
13 For a more comprehensive treatment of Pakistan’s problems of governance that benefits from the declassified
record of the Government of Pakistan, identifies and analyses its culture of power, and corruption, see Ilhan Niaz,
The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan, 1947–2008 (Karachi, 2011). For a broader treatment of the historical
and theoretical underpinnings of South Asia’s culture of power see Ilhan Niaz, An Inquiry into the Culture of Power
of the Subcontinent (Islamabad, 2006).
14 These patronage networks, as Alexander Evans explains in his study of Pakistan, Nigeria, Russia and China,
are not unique to South Asia and can even be found in the West. The difference is in degree and the coherence
of the patronage network as compared to the formal institutions. See Alexander Evans, “The Utility of Informal
6 Ilhan Niaz

Fourth, within the officer class, reputations mattered greatly and could adversely affect
socialisation and professional advancement if tainted with corruption. In the traditional
South Asian attitude, corruption carried no negative social connotations while the arbitrary
nature of promotions, transfers and recruitment rendered such a reputation, even if acquired,
meaningless if someone could be of use to the ruler. Since the rulers would often confiscate
the known wealth of their servants regardless of how honest they had been while in service,
the latter had no security and thus no basis for a moral relationship with their master.
Finally, officers had real control over their support staff and exercised that control in
accordance with the laws that so empowered them. Traditionally, control over subordinates
depended on access, real or perceived, to powerful people at court or the ruler himself. A
powerful officer was one who had the ruler’s ear and could thus use the sovereign’s arbitrary
power to punish enemies and reward favourites. The state apparatus was thus a collection of
rival mafias jostling for access to the ruler and feeding the cycle of arbitrary interventions,
theft, and oppression.
After independence from British rule Pakistan’s rulers steadily reverted to the pre-British
state morality.15 Pakistan’s civil service elite, which was supposed to be guardian of the state
apparatus’s integrity, also travelled the same path as the political and military leadership and
the society at large. This process of reversion to an indigenous state morality in the civilian
bureaucracy’s officer class had, and has, enormous consequences for the quality of governance
in Pakistan. This is because it is the civilian bureaucracy that is directly responsible for the
day-to-day running of public institutions and is therefore the most exposed to interaction
with the people of Pakistan. As a hierarchical institution in which the senior levels have
considerable power over those lower down the order, the quality of officers is a major
determinant of the quality of administration. It is indeed illogical to think that the quality
of governance that prevails in a country can be better than the quality of the civil servants
charged with managing the state apparatus.

Identifying the Tipping Point

One important point to bear in mind when examining corruption in Pakistan is that
Partition created enormous scope for corrupt practices on account of the property left
behind by fleeing Hindus and Sikhs and the property claims of Muslims fleeing India.16
The disposal of evacuee property, and its alleged appropriation by those who were not
entitled to it or by corrupt officials manoeuvring such property into the hands of their

Networks to Policy Makers”, in David Martin Jones, Ann Lane and Paul Schulte, (eds.), Terrorism, Security and the
Power of Informal Networks (Northampton, 2010), pp. 13–27.
15 The situation across the border in India is comparable to Pakistan when it comes to corruption. India’s
Planning Commission estimated that 70 to 90 per cent of funds for rural development are wasted or stolen by a
web of corrupt officials and politicians going right up to local MPs, and sometimes to the chief ministers as well.
Surveys indicate that more than nine out of ten Indians believe their political leaders to be corrupt. Ramchandra
Gupta, India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (London, 2007), pp. 683–686.
16 The sheer number of refugees complicated the process. In 1951, it was estimated that 7 million Pakistanis,
some 10% of the population, were refugees from India, including 4.68 million from the East Punjab who fled to the
West Punjab. 500,000 West Bengalis and Assamese plus 200,000 Urdu-speaking people from the United Provinces
and Bihar, had fled to East Bengal, and the balance had settled in urban areas of Sindh. See Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A
Modern History (London, 2005), p. 101.
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 7

relations, was a serious matter. In March 1949, the Punjab’s Secretary for Refugees and
Rehabilitation communicated the concerns expressed by the governor that “the difficult
question of wrong allocation of Evacuee Property” needed to be addressed.17 Far too many
locals were claiming refugee status in order to lay claim to property left behind by Hindus and
Sikhs.18 Many people who just happened to be in the Punjab at the time of Partition but were
domiciled elsewhere in Pakistan had forged documents and false testimonials that presented
them as aggrieved Muslim gentry from across the border who had fled to Pakistan.19 Then
there were those who simply occupied vacant property, realising that possession was nine-
tenths of the law and since the original owners were either dead or in India, and highly
unlikely to return, no one could seriously contest the new occupants’ claim.20 In 1954, the
Special Police Establishment (SPE) reported in an inquiry that in Karachi, civil servants had
appropriated some fifty significant properties belonging to evacuees.21 There was, therefore,
no Golden Age, during which Pakistan’s higher bureaucracy was corruption-free on account
of the controversial handling of evacuee property and political interference,22 while middle-
ranking and lower-level functionaries had much less fear of the law seeing the arbitrary
manner in which politicians and some senior civil servants behaved.23 That said, by today’s
standards, in the late 1940s and early 1950s the scale of corruption, the openness with which
it could be engaged in, and its social acceptability, were quite restricted.
Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, a retired civil service officer who entered the Civil Service
of Pakistan in November 1965, writes about the enthusiasm and idealism with which
he and many of his colleagues joined service. 1965, of course, was the high point of
bureaucratic rule and at the time Siddiqui believed that “If the bureaucracy was given a free
hand . . . everything would work perfectly; merit would reign supreme and justice and fair
play would be enforced”.24 This belief was quickly put to test and, thirty-five years after
joining service, Siddiqui came to what must have been a difficult realisation:
If I am asked to summarise the experience and insights developed during my career . . . I would
say that I have seen the erosion of the bureaucratic structure in Pakistan . . . This started in Ayub

17 1949, File No. 20/CF/49, Government of Pakistan, Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, No. 2300-Reh.-
49/1676, “Policy Regarding Allotment of Evacuee Property”, p. 1.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p. 16.
20 Ibid.
21 File No. 108/CW/54, Karachi, 20 December 1954, “Allotment of Evacuee Plots in Karachi to Government
Servants”, p. 1.
22 In East Bengal “the impression that seems to have gained ground in the public mind” was “that there is undue
interference with the police from the Ministers and MLAs” and while the officer ranks were “able to withstand
the influence”, subordinate officials were less resilient under pressure and cracked more often. It was warned that
if political pressure continued to be applied to the police there was a distinct “possibility of this virus infecting the
officers . . . .” See Report of the East Bengal Police Committee, 1953 (Dacca, 1954), p. 7. Today, political interference in
the police is rampant and officers have by and large adjusted to this reality. Politically-connected subordinates can
thus ignore their officers, while officers, keen to avoid arbitrary transfer or punishment, see themselves as personal
servants of those in power.
23 For a valuable study of the effects of Partition on two of Pakistan’s most important industrial centres, see Ilyas
Chattha, Partition and Locality: Violence, Migration, and Development in Gujranwala and Sialkotm 1947–1961 (Karachi,
2011). In Gujranwala, “the Hindus and Sikhs formed about one-third of the city’s population” but “paid more
than 90 per cent of its taxes and revenues”, Ibid., p. 45. The flight of Hindus and Sikhs created opportunities for
Muslims who, sometimes with state assistance, gradually took over the infrastructure that was left behind by its
former owners.
24 Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, Towards Good Governance (Karachi, 2001), p. 3.
8 Ilhan Niaz

Khan’s days when the political process was stifled and the politicisation of public services started.
Professionalism, competence, and honesty, which were the hallmark of the British system, started
giving way to cronyism, pliability, and dishonesty – both intellectual and financial. This was more
true in the case of senior officers, who would go to any length to please their superiors in order
to remain near the seat of power.25

Siddiqui’s assessment, which helps in identifying the point at which corruption in Pakistan’s
higher bureaucracy started to get out of control, now stands corroborated thanks to
the availability of the Pakistan central government’s declassified record at the National
Documentation Wing (NDW)26 in Islamabad. One of the reports held by the NDW is
the 1967 Report of the Special Committee for Eradication of Corruption from Services.27 Also
known as the Fida Hussain report, after its chairman, the special committee comprised
A. A. Hamid (Secretary Establishment), A. H. Quraishi (Chief Secretary, West Pakistan),
Ali Asghar (Chief Secretary, East Pakistan), S. Ghiassudin Ahmad, and M. Idris (Inspector
General of the Pakistan Police, Special Police Establishment).28
Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s military ruler from October 1958 to March 1969, set up the Special
Committee in order to examine corruption in the services and propose ways to combat
it for two major reasons.29 First, there was growing pressure within the bureaucracy that
the Ayub Khan regime’s approach to concentrating development and general administrative
functions in the hands of the Civil Service of Pakistan, to the neglect of other services and
specialists, was technically inefficient and open to abuse. Supreme Court Justice Cornelius,
in his capacity as the chairman of the 1959–62 Commission on Pay and Services, made the
case against over-concentration and over-reliance on the elite cadre of general administrators
and for more balanced and professionally contained bureaucracies.30 Second, there was real
concern from the early 1960s onwards that the expansion of state functions was overstretching
existing accountability capabilities. Ayub Khan’s policies increased the power of civil servants

25 Ibid., p. 11.
26 Formerly known as the National Documentation Centre (NDC).
27 Report of the Special Committee for Eradication of Corruption from Services (Rawalpindi, 1967).
28 In the Pakistani bureaucracy the Secretary Establishment is the head of personnel management, chief secretaries
are heads of the provincial administrations, and the Special Police Establishment is responsible for investigating
corruption within the services.
29 One way of looking at Pakistan’s problems of governance, development and political stabilisation is that they
arise from a dysfunctional identity that failed to adequately carve out a secular space for discourse and gradually
became more responsive to conservative interpretations of Islam. Ayub Khan’s military regime stands out, in this
respect, as the only government in Pakistan’s history to have made a determined effort to reject the ulama’s role in
interpreting Islam and craft for itself a greater secular space, or a space in which Islam could be reinterpreted in light
of worldly necessities. Farzana Sheikh, Making Sense of Pakistan (London, 2009), p. 92. Sheikh has based her attempt
to make sense of Pakistan for a western audience on published sources, many of them of western origin. What is
intriguing is that many hardline conservatives and militarists would agree with Sheikh’s analysis that Pakistan’s crisis
of identity is the root of its other problems, although they would argue that Pakistan is not sufficiently ideological
a state and that is the source of all the confusion in public life. Whatever the merits of this approach, one can
argue with equal, if not greater effectiveness, that Pakistan’s crisis of identity is rooted in the frustration of secular
aspirations and the loss of credibility and legitimacy of modernist elements on account of poor performance. These
same modernist elements, such as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, engaged in pandering to the conservatives who had only to
point out the gap between promise and performance and attribute it to the insufficiently Islamic character of the
westernised Muslims.
30 Report of the Pay and Services Commission, 1959–1962 (Karachi, 1962).
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 9

over businessmen and industrialists31 and also made them the agents through which the local
governments were manipulated to the regime’s advantage. A reform proposed in 1961 in
the course of the Constitution Commission’s proceedings was the creation of a Council
of State on the French pattern to check abuses by civil servants against citizens.32 It was
in this broader context of a falling popularity graph, alarm within segments of the civilian
bureaucracy and resentment in the army high command that Ayub Khan set up the Special
Committee to study administrative corruption and propose ways of combating it.33
The 1967 Special Committee defined corruption in the services as “misuse of official
power for private gain in some form” inclusive of “bribery, misappropriation of public
property, jobbery, favouritism, nepotism and the like”.34 Providing a brief overview of
historical developments in South Asia, the Special Committee observed that under the
British Raj, from the mid-1800s onwards, “public services, at least at the upper and middle
echelons were by and large honest”.35 With the outbreak of the Second World War in
September 1939, the Indian economy was mobilised and public expenditures rose creating
opportunities for black market operations, profiteering, and wastage of government funds
on war production and related services. After the war ended the British demobilised
the economy but did not have sufficient time to mop up the ill effects of increased
public expenditures on financial discipline. Independence and Partition in 1947 generated
pressures of their own and for Pakistan the disposal of property left by non-Muslims fleeing
Pakistan for India and coping with Muslim refugees streaming into Pakistan led to the
first serious rumblings that corruption was taking place within the higher bureaucracy. As
the refugee/evacuee property settlement situation stabilised in the mid-1950s, economic
development and regulation of the economy to produce rapid industrialisation became
basic priorities of the government. The Ayub Khan military regime in particular prided

31 These policies did produce considerable growth and development. The Ayub Khan era 1958–1969 saw the
highest industrial growth rates in Pakistan’s history with Compound Annual Rates of Growth for the Large Scale
Manufacturing Sector in Labour averaging 15.1%, in Capital 17.8%, and in overall Value Added 26%. In contrast,
the Annual Rates of Growth in Value Added and Capital were a fraction of the Ayub Khan era during the 1970s
and 1980s. Between 1969–70 and 1980–81, the growth rate for Value Added was just 6.4%, and for Capital it was
9.5% - predictably, given the employment generation approach of Bhutto’s socialist policies, Labour grew at 17.1%.
The 1980s saw Large Scale Manufacturing experience about the same growth rates for Labour, Capital and Value
Added (16.8%, 9.1% and 6.1%, respectively) as it had in the 1970s. Shahida Wizarat, The Rise and Fall of Industrial
Productivity in Pakistan (Karachi, 2002), p. 36. These statistics encapsulate in a few numbers the economic tragedy
that befell Pakistan as its industrial revolution was derailed in the 1970s leaving the country trapped in a low-level
equilibrium. Such is the legacy of Bhutto’s populism and Zia’s lack of constructive vision.
32 For more see, S. K. Delhavi, “Report on the Administrative Law & Courts in England, France, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Sweden & Spain”, (Rome-February, 1961, Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Government of Pakistan, Karachi). Delhavi’s study was submitted to the Constitution Commission set up by Ayub
Khan to evaluation the form of government best suited to Pakistan. The Commission advised in favour of a
Presidential form of government, but observed that the two major causes of the derailment of previous exercises
in constitution making were “undue interference in the administration on party considerations” and “an arbitrary
exercise by the Executive of its extensive powers”. Report of the Constitution Commission, Pakistan, 1961 (Karachi,
1961), p. 3.
33 That said, the Ayub Khan regime was remarkably insulated from the public mood. It went ahead, for example,
with the celebration of a Decade of Development just as protests against the government were gathering steam.
The actual overthrow of the regime was occasioned by a change in the mood of the senior army leadership under
General Yahya Khan, commander in chief from 1966, who resented Ayub Khan’s reliance on the civil servants and
wanted the army to play a more active role in running the day-to-day affairs of the country.
34 Report of the Special Committee for Eradication of Corruption from Services, p. 3.
35 Ibid., p. 4.
10 Ilhan Niaz

itself on its economic development agenda and Pakistan’s industrial output surged with the
state providing incentives, support and a business friendly, if at times overbearing, policy
framework. The increased emphasis on development, however, was not accompanied by
comparable improvements in the accountability machinery while the issuance of licenses,
vouchers and incentives to businessmen became sources of corruption at the officer level.
Ayub Khan’s local government reforms, which created Basic Democracies under the
direction of the civil service that required the bureaucracy to manipulate local politics to
meet the legitimacy requirements of the regime, used development funding as an instrument
of political patronage. Concluding its historical survey, the Special Committee contended
“While the ultimate aim must be” the “complete eradication” of corruption, “experience
warns us not to be overambitious and to face the problem realistically. If we can devise
effective ways to even its increase, a good beginning will have been made”.36
Having limited itself to the task of containment rather than eradication, the Special
Committee went on to examine the level of corruption in different parts of the state
apparatus. One assessment that emerged regarding the police, the financial administration,
the civil service and the judiciary was that corruption had grown at the lower levels in
all departments and normally took the form of bribery/extortion.37 In the land revenue
administration and the police, the incidence of corruption in the lower ranks was alarming
while in the customs, excise and income tax departments the assessment staff was particularly
prone to soliciting bribes.38 While the core functions of the state (law and order and financial
administration) were corrupt at the lower levels, the situation in the development-related
departments was far more unnerving. In the Public Works Departments (PWD), responsible
for building physical infrastructure, there existed a “vertical combination” of corruption that
went from the “munshi up to the Executive Engineer and often higher”.39 In ministries and
departments engaged in implementing industrial and commercial development policies and
acting as authorisation agents for private ventures, “illegal gratification” was “received at all
levels for the issue of permits, licences” and other incentives.40 In semi-government bodies,
commission taking even by high officials was a problem while at the local level the telephone
department and the Basic Democrats had become notorious for malpractices.41
In examining the causes of corruption in the lower levels of the state apparatus the
Special Committee felt that economic need, increased opportunity, insufficient oversight by
officers and rising expectations were the main drivers. Prices were increasing and society
was becoming more materialistic and consumerist partly on account of the government’s
own policy of prioritising economic development. The lower tiers of government employees
naturally wanted their children to do better in life but were hamstrung by large families with a
large number of dependents. The increased emphasis on development work and “efficiency”
in its execution meant that officers were willing to tolerate or ignore irregularities to get

36 Ibid., p. 7.
37 Ibid., pp. 12–14.
38 Ibid., p. 13.
39 Ibid. A munshi is typically a clerk or record keeper.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 11

things done.42 The increases in development expenditure, the growth in the number of
projects and pressure to deliver output had diminished the will and ability of officers to
check their subordinates. The most visible example of this was the land revenue
administration, theoretically under the supervision of the District Collector/Deputy
Commissioner. With the commissioners now running around implementing development
work and managing the local governments, corruption in the land revenue administration,
always problematic, had spiralled out of control. This was particularly unfortunate for Pakistan
for most of the people lived in the countryside and were employed in agriculture.
At the officer level the growth of corruption seemed to have had more to do with
opportunity and greed rather than opportunity and need. Salaries in the public sector were
still competitive enough to attract the best graduates to the state services, and the social
prestige of serving the state was far greater than anything the private sector could offer.
The Special Committee, however, felt that government policies since 1947 had brought
the bureaucratic elite and the corporate or business elite into sustained contact. The policy
was to use the regulatory and fiscal power of the state to boost economic growth rates and
accelerate industrial development. Businessmen and industrialists had consequently achieved
“phenomenal material prosperity” and the economy was booming.43 The trouble was that
the civil servants’ proximity to the rapidly rising entrepreneurs had altered socialisation
parameters and led the former to try and imitate the lifestyles of the latter.44 With more
attention being paid at training institutions to development subjects and less to laws and
procedures, newly inducted and junior officers lacked sufficient administrative training and
could therefore be more easily deceived by corrupt subordinates.45
Increased opportunity, falling standards of administrative training with reference to laws
and procedures, changes to socialisation parameters, had apparently combined with impunity.
Between 1948 and 1966, only 102 officers in the federal government, 70 in West Pakistan,
and three in East Pakistan, were successfully tried and punished for corruption and abuse
of power by the anti-corruption machinery.46 Pakistan was not adequately equipped with
institutions that could effectively detect, investigate and prosecute cases of white-collar
crime with the result that cases failed to hold up in court.47 The total number of convictions
against number of cases was generally low. In East Pakistan, against 8,114 cases instituted on
charges of corruption at all levels between 1951 and 1966, 2,534 resulted in convictions.48
In West Pakistan, against 7,321 cases instituted between 1948 and 1966, 1,559 resulted in
convictions.49 In the central government, against 8,223 cases instituted between 1947 and
1966, 2,030 resulted in convictions.50 With conviction rates in the range of 20–30%, there
was insufficient legal deterrent while the growing outlay on development and emphasis on
achieving goals quickly had greatly increased the opportunities for plunder.

42 Ibid., p. 14.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid., p. 16.
46 Ibid., p. 25.
47 Ibid., p. 26.
48 Ibid., p. 51. The conviction rate comes out to 31.23%.
49 Ibid., p. 53. The conviction rate comes out to 21.30%.
50 Ibid., p. 55. The conviction rate comes out to 24.69%.
12 Ilhan Niaz

The Special Committee advised the government to review laws and procedures with
the aim of simplifying them and thereby rendering them more transparent. It was also
recommended that anti-corruption laws be strengthened by giving departmental heads more
power to discipline corrupt officials within their departments on the basis of reputation.51
Such a change assumed that most officers were not corrupt and that departmental heads
could be relied on to act decisively if they were legally empowered. Combined with austerity
campaigns in government expenditure and great political education to sensitise citizens to
the long-term dangers posed by corruption, the Special Committee felt that the problem
could be contained within manageable limits. The analysis and recommendations of the
Special Committee, however, were overtaken by political mobilisation in Pakistan against
the Ayub Khan military regime leading to its overthrow in March 1969, civil war and the
breakup of Pakistan in 1971, and the advent to power of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)
led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.52

Understanding the Legacy of the First PPP Government, 1971–1977

The first PPP government undertook a number of reforms of the civilian bureaucracy
and economy aimed at consolidating power and delivering on a populist-socialist agenda.53
The administrative reforms included the arbitrary dismissal from public service of thousands
of civil servants in the central and provincial bureaucracy,54 the induction of thousands
of political appointees via the lateral induction scheme,55 and changes to the formal
organisation, pay scales and nomenclature of the services.56 The economic reforms included

51 Ibid.,
p. 15.
52 Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto “came to domestic politics by way of foreign affairs. His experiences in the international
arena deeply affected his perceptions of Pakistan’s domestic politics”. His attitude towards foreign aid, especially
from the West, was increasingly hostile for he felt that such aid was being used “to build up an indigenous capitalist
class in Pakistan that would be subservient to outside interests” in addition to running up external debt. “These
perspectives linked Bhutto with important domestic constituencies and social groups, including elements in the
bureaucracy, that had begun to question the whole system of aid at a time when aid inputs had begun to decline and
the problem of debt servicing assume major proportions”. Philip E. Jones, The Pakistan People’s Party: Rise to Power
(Karachi, 2003), p. 89. Once the PPP achieved electoral success, and indeed ever since then, its internal politics
revolved around the question of allocation of ministries for these would be “the primary channels of patronage as
well as policy making” though interest in the latter was not that strong. Ibid., p. 442.
53 One component of this agenda was ensuring better distribution of wealth and reversing the trickle-down and
elitist economic policies of the Ayub Khan regime. Interestingly, the percentage of income out of total household
income earned by the bottom 20% of Pakistani households fell from 8.4% in 1970 to 7.4% by 1979. Wizarat, The
Rise and Fall of Industrial Productivity in Pakistan, p. 24. Thus, the poorest 20% of Pakistanis experienced a marginal
decrease in their share of national income under the populist, state-employment oriented, Bhutto government. On
the other hand during the Ayub Khan era, the same percentage rose from 6.4% in 1963 to 8.4% in 1970. Ibid.
54 In March 1972 some 2,000 civil servants in the federal government and more than 500 in the provincial
administrations were dismissed, demoted, or otherwise punished using Martial Law Regulation (MLR) 114. In
August 1973 eight Secretaries, one Additional Secretary, and seven Joint Secretaries were retired from service, the
orders for dismissal having apparently been communicated verbally. In October 1976, in the run up to the March
1977 general elections, 174 officers were dismissed from service and the plan was to carry out another purge after
the elections were over.
55 During the first PPP government there were about 5,500 political appointments to the federal and provincial
administration in grades 16–22 (22 being the highest and corresponding to a Secretary to the Government, and 16
being one grade below an officer with the possibility of promotion to officer rank).
56 The old structure, which was complex but very flexible and geared towards limiting promotions against actual
posts, had four Classes and 650+ pay scales. It was replaced by a unified grading structure that began at Grade 1
and rose to Grade 22 and was tied to a standardised National Pay Scale.
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 13

nationalisation of industries and services, reductions in the size of landholdings, the use of
the public sector to generate employment, and deficit financing through borrowing and the
printing of currency. The net effect of these reforms was the professionalism, impartiality
and autonomy of the civilian bureaucracy’s officer class was dealt a mortal blow in the
name of democracy while its power over the economy and society was greatly increased on
account of nationalisation and land reforms carried out in the name of socialism. The result
in terms of corruption was a dramatic increase while the ability of the state to manage itself
and execute policies was depleted. Bhutto’s objective seems to have been to have a civilian
bureaucracy that was personally loyal to him and had greater power over society and the
economy.
The consequences were felt throughout the state apparatus. The police force was being
openly used by the politicians as bodyguards and was subject to arbitrary interference by
members of the governing party. The Bhutto government’s own Subcommittee on Law
and Order was constrained to admit that “the very frequently stated complaint that too
many transfers and postings” were based on purely political considerations “was genuine”.57
Corruption at the district and station levels in the police was “really rampant” and was
“by far the major cause of decrease of Government prestige”.58 One major reason why the
police was starved of resources and left to live off the land was the government was investing
heavily in the Federal Security Force (FSF), Bhutto’s praetorian guard and political police
that enjoyed the numeral strength of a regular infantry division (about 17,000 men). The
Bhutto government’s poor handling of the police meant that there was a general deterioration
in the quality of investigation and prosecution making it even harder for the state to obtain
convictions under the law.
The nationalisation of industries and services was not carried out with planning or
foresight. Thus, in July 1976, 2,815 production units of agro-based industries were
nationalised on Bhutto’s direct orders – not even the members of the cabinet were
consulted.59 The Cotton Trading Corporation of Pakistan, created to handle the nationalised
cotton processing industrial units, doubled the number of its employees to 51,213 between
July 1976 and July 1977 while output of bales of lint cotton fell from 2,889 thousand bales
to 1,878 thousand bales during the same period.60 Nationalisation of industries devastated
private sector investment, which fell from 1.32 billion Pakistani Rupees in 1971 to 461 million
Pakistani Rupees in 1976.61 During the same period, public sector investment rose from 63
million Pakistani Rupees to 1.17 billion Pakistani Rupees.62 Public sector investment rested
on borrowing and printing money and fuelled inflation thus diminishing real pay all round.
This investment was being used to operate a growing pool of productive assets arbitrarily
nationalised and placed at the mercy of a civilian bureaucracy that was itself being manhandled

57 Report of the Subcommittee on Law and Order, 1976 (Islamabad, 1976), p. 18. Ch. Fazle-Haque, Secretary, Interior,
was the Chairman of the 1976 Subcommittee on Law and Order.
58 Ibid., p. 15. Twenty-three years earlier, the East Bengal Police Committee had warned of the dangers of
allowing political interference in the police. By 1976, these warnings, long disregarded, had become reality as the
police was compromised at all levels by political interference and arbitrary use of the power of transfer.
59 White Paper on the Performance of the Bhutto Regime Vol. IV, The Economy (Islamabad, 1979), p. 30.
60 Ibid., p. 32.
61 Ibid., p. 52.
62 Ibid.
14 Ilhan Niaz

through purges and political appointments by the government. Alongside nationalisation

of many industries and services, incentives granted to privately-owned industries during
the Ayub Khan regime, such as export subsidies, tax holidays, higher duties on imports
that competed with local industry, etc., were reduced or eliminated. Predictably, “private
investment and even total investment in manufacturing as a percentage of GDP fell during
the period”.63 By 1974 the government was spending twice what it earned in tax revenues
with attempts to increase the tax base faltering due to flight of capital and a sullen apathetic
citizenry that saw no point in paying taxes that were going to be wasted or stolen.64
The nationalisation of the banking sector, executed on 1 January 1974 without consulting
the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), added to the potential for corruption in the form of
loans made under political pressure. Ruling party members could now secure loans over
technical and legal objections from the nationalised banks and were under no real obligation
to pay back the money they had borrowed. By 31 December 1975, the SBP estimated that
the nationalised banks had made “irregular” loans worth 1.34 billion Pakistani Rupees.65
Hundreds of appointments were made in the nationalised banks on political grounds while
bank “employees with any semblance of political affiliation” received rapid promotions and
transfers to key positions.66 Pakistan’s nine privately-owned shipping companies (nationalised
on the same day as the banking sector and taken over by the National Shipping Corporation
[NSC]) fared as badly as the banks. Out of 223 appointments made in the NSC between
1975 and 1977, 187 “were made by Mumtaz Bhutto alone”.67
The legacy of the Bhutto government was that a bureaucracy already struggling to
keep corruption under control was subjected to seismic shocks that served to undermine
professional integrity while placing more economic patronage under its control. The lateral
induction of thousands of political appointees into the state services and nationalised entities
politicised both, diminished internal discipline and entrenched disregard for law, merit and
propriety even at the officer level.68 In converting the state into the personal estate of the ruler
and the servants of the state into personal servants, Bhutto’s government greatly accelerated
Pakistan’s regression towards the pre-British governing mentality. Fiscal mismanagement in
terms of borrowing, printing and confiscations, together with political interference in the

63 A. R. Kemal, “Patterns and Growth of Pakistan’s Industrial Sector”, in Shahrukh Rafi Khan, (ed.), Fifty Years
of Pakistan’s Economy: Traditional Topics and Contemporary Concerns (Karachi, 1999), p. 154.
64 Final Report of the Taxation Commission, Vol. I (Karachi, 1974), p. 19. Tax to GDP stood at 13% while public
expenditure stood at 25% of GDP. The Chairman of the 1974 Taxation Commission was Mahboob ur Rashid,
Chairman of the Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation (PICIC).
65 White Paper on the Performance of the Bhutto Regime Vol. IV, The Economy, p. 66.
66 Ibid., p. 74. Mumtaz Bhutto was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s cousin and a prominent leader within the PPP.
67 Ibid., p. 79.
68 Charles Kennedy takes a somewhat more sanguine view of the impact of the Lateral Entry Scheme on the
civil service. He makes the case that the negative opinions held by career civil servants of the lateral entrants made
politicisation and disregard for departmental and professional requirements “self-fulfilling prophecies”. Kennedy
has a point in that career civil servants who had earned their appointments after years of examination preparation
and training would not take kindly to a sudden influx (basically between 1972 and 1975) of political appointees.
Charles Kennedy, Bureaucracy in Pakistan (Karachi, 1987), p. 141. Some of appointees were competent, on a few
occasions as or more able than the career civil servants recruited via competitive examinations. The effect on the
service ethos, however, was negative, new divisions were created and internal discipline suffered. However, that is
precisely what Bhutto wanted – a divided and politicised civil service that would do his government’s bidding without asking
twice.
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 15

police and declining real pay in the pubic sector further vitiated the atmosphere.69 In 1972,
at the beginning of the tenure of the first PPP government, the National Pay Commission
had observed that a “sizeable section of Government employees” were “not yet involved in
corrupt practices, and the public feeling against corruption” was “still strong”.70 In 1979,
the Commission on the Eradication of Corruption observed that compared to the late 1960s
“the honest and competent were on the defensive”, “social pressures against dishonesty and
corruption” had collapsed and a mafia of corrupt officers was now entrenched in the state
apparatus.71 This mafia had become so powerful and well-connected that the state’s anti-
corruption machinery, itself politicised and incompetent after years of purges and arbitrary
transfers, could not touch them and even “known and exposed” corrupt officers were
“allowed improvements in their position and power on account of other factors”.72 Official
power was increasingly personal rather than institutional with the result that the “scope
for corruption” had increased as had “indiscipline and irresponsibility” in all government
institutions.73 The civilian bureaucracy’s internal evaluation system had “broken down” due
to politicisation, and routine hierarchical supervision and inspection were no longer carried
out.74 Even the statutory Auditor General’s report was “years behind schedule” due to the
non-cooperation of departments.75 Officers, subjected to arbitrary transfers, now deliberately
avoided “confronting situations or persons” who brought to their notice “genuine difficulties
capable of and requiring a solution”.76

Conclusion

In the 1960s increased development expenditure and pressure on civil servants to achieve
targets quickly led to serious concerns being raised that corruption was gaining traction
within the officer class of the civilian bureaucracy and had become widespread in certain
parts of the apparatus. The lower levels of the civilian bureaucracy were losing what little
integrity they had as officers focused on development issues to the neglect of running
their establishment in accordance with the law. The Ayub Khan regime’s efforts to secure
legitimacy by funnelling development funds through the Basic Democracies and using
the civil service to manipulate and control local governments diminished the prestige and
impartiality of the services. These problems had reached such alarming proportions that

69 In 1976, the nominal pay of a Secretary to the Government (about 3,500 Pakistani Rupees) was about the
same or slightly less than it had been in 1947 (about 4,000 Pakistani Rupees). Report of the National Pay Commission,
1976 (Islamabad, 1976), pp. 82–83. The decline in real pay forced more civil servants to rely on state-provided
transport and housing, which, in turn, created a large potential for abuse and favouritism. The Chairman of the
1976 Pay Commission was Supreme Court Justice Anwar ul Haq.
70 Report of the National Pay Commission, 1970–1972 (Islamabad, 1972), p. 123. The Chairman of the 1972 Pay
Commission was Mumtaz Hasan, former Secretary, Ministry of Finance.
71 Report of the Commission on the Eradication of Corruption, 1979 (Islamabad, 1979), p. 14. Supreme Court Justice
Shafi-ur-Rehman was the Chairman of this commission.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
74 I bid., pp. 34–35.
75 Ibid., p. 35.
76 Ibid., p. 45.
16 Ilhan Niaz

the Special Committee set up by Ayub Khan to find ways to eradicate corruption from
the services was forced to adopt the much less ambitious goal of containing corruption
within its existing dimensions. This, felt the members of the Special Committee, would be
a creditable achievement and was within the institutional capacity of the state to pull off.
The message to the government was unmistakable and lucid – corruption was growing, it
had spread widely in certain areas with public works, land revenue, policing, departments
concerned with commercial and industrial development, and services like telephones badly
affected. If measures were not taken to curb its growth it was only a question of time
before the higher bureaucracy would be also infected and once that happened fighting
corruption would become considerably more difficult. That said, in 1967, there were more
than enough honest and competent officers in the service of Pakistan to stem the tide
provided that the political will, training and legal powers to get the job done were in
place.
In the 1970s Pakistan’s state apparatus was subjected to reforms by the first PPP
government. The reforms ended up increasing the powers of the civilian bureaucracy relative
to the rest of society while weakening professionalism and autonomy and turning the same
bureaucracy into a servile instrument in the hands of the political government. Bhutto
wielded that instrument bluntly and arbitrarily, effectively derailing Pakistan’s economic
development while politicising the state machinery responsible for maintaining order,
collecting taxes and providing services such as education and health. By the time Bhutto
was overthrown Pakistan’s civilian bureaucracy was no longer capable of implementing
policies efficiently and in accordance with law, and servants of the state considered
themselves servants of the ruler. While real pay declined and private investment collapsed,
opportunities for corruption and embezzlement, whether in the form of bad loans from
nationalised banks or misuse of industrial and commercial assets arbitrarily confiscated from
their owners, multiplied. The honest and competent were purged for resisting arbitrary
orders or perceived slights while the dishonest and incompetent were actively promoted
on grounds of their political loyalty. The arbitrary, dysfunctional estate that Pakistanis
recognise as their “state” is very much the legacy of the first PPP government and it is
Bhutto’s style of leadership, rather than Jinnah’s, that Pakistani politicians today strive to
emulate.
In 1979, the Civil Service Commission constituted by the Zia-ul Haq military regime
(1977–88) made the case that if corruption and maladministration were to be contained
and the state apparatus rehabilitated the arbitrary power of the political leadership over
the higher bureaucracy needed to be reduced. The 1973 Constitution did not provide
constitutional guarantees to civil servants, nor did it ensure the autonomy of the Public
Services Commissions. The Commission urged the new regime “that in our situation, it
is imperative that public servants should be neutral, impartial and objective . . . For this it is
necessary that the civil services are duly protected against arbitrary, whimsical and vindictive
actions motivated by extraneous considerations”.77 It was therefore necessary to reintroduce

77 Report of the Civil Services Commission, 1978–1979 (Islamabad, 1979), p. 153. The Chairman of the 1978–9
Commission was Supreme Court Justice Anwar-ul-Haq.
 Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan 17

Articles 181 and 182 of the 1956 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and in
this way restore security of service to civil servants if the decay of state institutions was to be
arrested. This advice, like other wise feedback given to Pakistan’s rulers, was ignored for in
many ways having a more powerful and more servile bureaucracy eminently suited Zia-ul
Haq and his pseudo-democratic successors. niazone80@gmail.com

Ilhan Niaz
Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad