Bureaucracy is the group of professional officers who performs
rationalized functions in large scale organization, especially government
ones. thus an organization is said to be bureaucratized when its procedures
Ek for action and decision have become formalized and impersonal through
elaborate rules that are “public”. The growth of modern government is
thus been as intimately tied to the development of bureaucracy, and no
modern state could operate without bureaucracy. The popular antithesis
between bureaucracy and democracy is an oratorical slogan that endangers
the future of democracy. for a constitutional system that cannot function
effectively, that cannot act with dispatch and vigor, cannot alive.
Fortunately, both the Swiss and the British have shown that an effective.
responsible bureaucracy is quite 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
that is 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
“stateism”. They do not belong to the whole collectively but to the state
and to the bureaucrats who control it. In the last analysis, it is these
bureaucrats the technicians, directors and specialists holding key positions
in the party and state administration – whole exploit the proletarians and
SS 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
state” type of capitalist democracies. The American philosopher and critic James Burnham 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 accupational 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 recognised that corruption always move 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
bank defaulters, the political involvement of politicians must obviously be
for too high. Without effective big politician interest, it is impossible in
this country to secure big business loans, deliberately with heavy under
collatualisation, 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
retain dominant position. Once a class becomes dominant and retains its
dominance, the autonomy of bureaucracy ceases of exist 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 loose 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 organisations but had never been held
accountable even if there were reports of corruption against them. They
are appointed as heads of public sector organisation like Pakistan Steel
Mills, Pakistan ordinance Factories, Oil & Gas Development Corporation,
Water and Power Development Authority, Pakistan Telecommunication
Corporation, Sui Gas Company etc.; Military Procurements 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.