Does Pakistan Need New Provinces? The Real Problem Is Power Stopping at Provincial Capitals

 

Pakistan moved significant political and fiscal authority from Islamabad to the provinces, but local governments remain comparatively weak. The deeper question behind the new-provinces debate is whether creating more provincial capitals will bring power closer to citizens or simply create new centres of authority.

Pakistan transferred enormous authority from Islamabad to the provinces after 2010. It never completed the second journey, from provincial capitals to elected cities and districts. Creating more provinces may reduce administrative distance, but without deeper local devolution it could simply produce more centres of power.I Look at This Debate From Karachi

A broken road in Karachi can become a lesson in Pakistani federalism surprisingly quickly. I have often watched people complain about a municipal problem and then struggle with the next question: which institution actually controls it? The elected local government may be visible, but provincial departments, specialised authorities, cantonment administrations and other public bodies can exercise authority over different pieces of the same city.

That is why the renewed debate about creating new provinces caught my attention. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has publicly questioned whether Pakistan's existing administrative structure can cope with the country's population and governance demands, pushing an old argument back into national politics. Political resistance followed quickly, particularly where proposals for new administrative arrangements touch Sindh and its territorial identity.

From Karachi, however, I think the debate begins one level too high. Pakistan may eventually need additional provinces, and demographic change gives serious reasons to examine that possibility. But before drawing another boundary on the map, I want to know what happens to power after it reaches the new provincial capital.

That question is less exciting on television. Institutionally, it is much more important.

Foundation: Pakistan Decentralised Power, but Only Part of the Way

Pakistan attempted one of its largest constitutional redistributions of power in 2010. The 18th Amendment transferred important responsibilities from the federation to the provinces, while the Seventh National Finance Commission Award strengthened provincial access to federal revenues. The settlement changed the balance between Islamabad and Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta in ways that still shape Pakistani politics.

The basic principle made sense. A federal ministry in Islamabad cannot understand every school, hospital or development problem across a country of more than 240 million people. Provincial governments sit closer to local conditions, although geographical proximity by itself does not guarantee accountability.

I stopped at one figure in the World Bank's 2026 assessment of Pakistan's fiscal federalism because it complicates the familiar story about devolution. Local governments accounted for roughly 10 percent of total government expenditure in 2005. By 2024, their share had fallen below 5 percent. (worldbank.org)

The dates require care. The 2005 figure predates both the Seventh NFC Award and the 18th Amendment, so it would be wrong to claim that the constitutional amendment itself caused the decline. What the comparison does show is something more defensible: Pakistan strengthened the provincial tier dramatically without establishing an equally powerful second stage of fiscal devolution beneath it.

The same World Bank assessment points to another structural problem. More than 80 percent of provincial expenditure in FY2023 went towards recurrent costs, while district allocations often reflected historical spending patterns rather than poverty or identifiable service-delivery gaps. Provincial expenditure expanded after the post-2010 reforms, but administrative spending absorbed a significant part of that growth. (worldbank.org)

Pakistan's decentralisation therefore did not necessarily go too far.

It stopped halfway, and the stopping point matters.

The Constitution Created Two Different Kinds of Devolution

Article 140A of the Constitution requires every province to establish a local-government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility to elected local representatives. On paper, the principle is clear. The difficulty begins when I compare that guarantee with the constitutional machinery protecting federal-to-provincial fiscal transfers.

Article 160 establishes the National Finance Commission framework. The NFC provides a constitutional mechanism through which major revenues pass from the federation to the provinces, making the federal-provincial fiscal relationship one of the central bargains of Pakistan's political system. Provincial governments therefore possess a powerful constitutional position when negotiating their share of national resources.

Local governments do not enjoy an equivalent nationwide fiscal guarantee.

Provinces legislate their local-government systems and shape the arrangements through which resources move downward. The Constitution demands devolution, but Pakistan has no local equivalent of the NFC that gives every elected municipality or district a comparably secure claim over provincial revenues. The result is an asymmetry built into the structure itself.

I would describe it carefully. Pakistan does not have a literal provincial monopoly over public authority because federal institutions and specialised agencies retain important powers, while cantonment administrations complicate urban governance further. What Pakistan does have is a strong provincial concentration of fiscal and administrative authority that could otherwise sit closer to elected local governments.

That distinction becomes particularly important in Karachi.

Karachi Shows What Fragmented Power Looks Like

Karachi is useful because the problem here cannot simply be described as Islamabad controlling everything. The Sindh government operates from the city itself. If physical distance from the provincial capital were the central explanation for poor urban governance, Karachi should possess an enormous administrative advantage.

Yet authority across the metropolis remains fragmented.

The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and elected local bodies operate alongside Sindh government departments and specialised public agencies. Cantonment administrations govern substantial areas under a different institutional structure. Water, land, transport, roads and municipal services can involve different authorities, depending on the location and function involved.

Water illustrates the problem particularly well. The Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation operates under provincial legislation and its governance structure involves the Sindh government as well as the city's elected leadership. A Karachi resident experiencing a water or sewerage failure may therefore encounter an institution whose accountability cannot be reduced neatly to the mayor standing before voters.

That is why elections alone cannot produce strong local government. An elected mayor can possess democratic legitimacy while important revenue streams and administrative powers remain elsewhere. When responsibility fragments but political blame concentrates on the most visible officeholder, voters struggle to identify who actually controlled the failed service.

I have lived long enough in Karachi to recognise the practical result. People know that something has gone wrong, yet identifying the institution with the money and legal authority can become a separate investigation. A democratic system works badly when responsibility becomes harder to locate than the problem itself.

Pakistan Has Tried Local Devolution Before, but With a Political Catch

The argument becomes more complicated when I look back at Pakistan's history.

General Pervez Musharraf's government introduced the Devolution of Power Plan in 2001 and created elected district governments with substantial administrative ambitions. District nazims became powerful political actors in many parts of the country. Yet the reform emerged under military rule and weakened the traditional position of provincial political elites at the same time.

That history produced a peculiar Pakistani pattern.

Military governments have periodically found local institutions useful because they can bypass established provincial politicians. Civilian provincial governments, once restored, have often had incentives to reclaim administrative space and development authority. Local government consequently becomes trapped between centralising institutions above and provincial political interests that do not always want a durable rival below.

This history makes simple nostalgia for the 2001 system unhelpful. A local-government structure cannot become genuinely democratic if its strength depends on a military ruler seeking an alternative political base. But provincial democracy also remains incomplete when elected provincial governments hesitate to transfer meaningful authority to elected councils underneath them.

Pakistan has struggled to combine both requirements in one durable arrangement.

I think this historical tension explains more than the usual accusation that politicians simply dislike local government. The issue involves the architecture of political power itself.

Why Provincial Governments Have Little Incentive to Let Go

Consider the incentives facing a chief minister.

A provincial government that controls development expenditure can announce schemes under its own political banner. Ministers and legislators can claim credit for projects, while provincial departments retain influence over implementation and appointments. The political return remains visible to the government that controls the money.

Transfer predictable revenue and genuine authority to a mayor or district government, and something changes.

The local politician can now claim the credit.

More importantly, citizens may begin approaching the local institution rather than provincial legislators for routine development needs. Political mediation changes, bureaucratic turf contracts and a separate elected centre of authority begins to emerge below the province.

That is why I hesitate when Pakistan's governance failures are explained simply through corruption or incompetence. Those problems exist, but they do not explain the persistence of the structure. Institutions survive because somebody benefits from the authority they distribute.

Provincial centralisation creates such benefits.

A chief minister may sincerely support devolution from Islamabad because it enlarges provincial autonomy. The same government can become much less enthusiastic when devolution means surrendering its own fiscal discretion to municipalities. Pakistan's constitutional history therefore contains an uncomfortable pattern: political actors often favour decentralisation most strongly when they are asking somebody above them to give up power.

The test begins after they receive it.

Would New Provinces Solve Any of This?

I do not dismiss the case for additional provinces.

South Punjab demonstrates why the question deserves serious consideration. A citizen in Dera Ghazi Khan or Bahawalpur can reasonably argue that Lahore is geographically and politically distant, and that a provincial administration centred closer to southern Punjab might understand regional needs better. Administrative distance is real, and representation matters.

A smaller province can therefore improve access to provincial government.

It cannot guarantee decentralisation.

Imagine a new province centred on Multan. Government offices move closer, a provincial assembly emerges and southern Punjab acquires greater political representation. Those would constitute genuine institutional changes.

But another question appears almost immediately.

What happens if Multan then retains the same fiscal dominance over districts and municipalities that critics currently attribute to Lahore?

Pakistan would have shortened the distance between the citizen and the provincial capital without necessarily changing the relationship between them. One centre would have become two. The underlying hierarchy could survive almost intact.

This is why I do not see new provinces and strong local governments as competing ideas. Pakistan may need both in some regions. But creating a province solves a different problem from transferring fiscal and administrative power to a city or district.

Confusing those two reforms could become very expensive.

More Provinces Also Mean Another Fiscal Bargain

Creating a province requires more than drawing a line.

Provincial boundaries carry constitutional consequences, and changing them requires the procedure laid down in the Constitution, including approval involving the affected province. New provinces would also enter Pakistan's already difficult debate over representation and distribution of national resources.

The NFC question would become unavoidable.

A new province would need a place within the fiscal distribution system. Population currently plays a major role in the formula, while poverty, revenue collection or generation and inverse population density also matter under the existing framework. Every new unit would create political arguments over shares that existing provinces already defend fiercely.

None of this means administrative reorganisation should be forbidden because it costs money. Governments exist to solve public problems, and sometimes institutional restructuring is worth the expense. The relevant question is whether Pakistan would spend political capital and public money creating another provincial tier without fixing the weakness immediately beneath it.

I find that possibility quite plausible.

Pakistan could create new assemblies, chief ministers' secretariats and administrative hierarchies while leaving municipal governments dependent on decisions taken above them. The country would then possess more provincial centres without becoming substantially more local.

Follow Authority Before Drawing the Map

The debate over Pakistan's provinces usually begins with geography. Punjab looks enormous. Balochistan covers vast territory, while Karachi appears administratively unlike much of Sindh around it.

I would begin somewhere else.

Take a rupee of public money and follow it.

Ask where an elected local government obtains predictable revenue without repeatedly depending on provincial discretion. Then take a basic public service and identify the office that possesses legal authority over it. If the voter cannot easily connect money, authority and electoral responsibility, changing provincial boundaries may leave the most important part of governance untouched.

The World Bank's finding that local governments represented less than 5 percent of total government expenditure in 2024 keeps pulling me back to this problem. Pakistan spent decades arguing over federalism while the governments physically closest to citizens occupied a surprisingly small fiscal space. (worldbank.org)

That is not an argument against the 18th Amendment. I think it reveals unfinished business created by Pakistan's broader federal evolution.

Islamabad had to surrender power.

Now the provincial capitals face the same question.

Unresolved Close: The Other Map of Pakistan

When I look at Pakistan's political map from Karachi, I can imagine many possible boundaries. South Punjab can become a province. Other administrative units could emerge as population, identity and political demands change.

There is another map that interests me more.

It has no coloured provincial borders. It traces the movement of a tax rupee from the citizen to the state and then back towards the street where a school needs teachers or a sewer has failed. Somewhere along that journey, authority stops moving downward.

Pakistan changed part of that route after 2010.

Perhaps the country will eventually redraw its provincial boundaries as well. A nation of this size cannot assume that an administrative map inherited from another demographic age will remain suitable forever. But a new provincial capital can become another distant capital surprisingly quickly if the district beneath it still waits for permission and money.

I return to Karachi and the ordinary road outside my house.

If someone redraws the boundary around this city tomorrow, gives the new territory another constitutional status and places another powerful government above its neighbourhoods, I will still have one question.

Who controls the road, and who controls the money?