Another Extension To Quota System

Federal Government has decided to give yet another extension to quota system. Under a recent decision the provision will be extended for another twenty years. Thought the decisions needs to be approved by houses of Parliament by two third majority but the same will not be a problem as most of the political parties, saving MQM and possibly PTI, though one is not sure, will support such a move.  Putting together the parties lack 114 members in needed in National Assembly to block constitutional amendments. It is not much different in Senate either.   

The constitution provides that all jobs under the government of Pakistan, provinces and local authorities should be provided on merit and merit alone without any discrimination. Article 27 of the constitution provides that “no citizen otherwise qualified for appointment in the service of Pakistan shall be discriminated against in respect of any such appointment only on the grounds of race, religion, caste, sex, residence or place of birth.”  

However, in order in order to ensure adequate representation to different provinces and regions of the country, the framers of the constitution inserted a proviso, which was to expire after ten years,  allowing reservation of posts for persons belonging to any class or areas.  It was hoped that by the end of that period existing gap in infrastructural development and provision of opportunities to different provinces and regions will be filed and reservation of seats will not be needed.

Similar provisions were found in constitutions of 1956 and 1962.   

Under this provision governments, both federal and provincial , fixed percentage of seats in government services for different provinces and regions in accordance with numerical strength of the province/region in the federation or the respective province. Thus the quota of all the provinces, FATA, Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan was fixed in government jobs under the federal government.  In case of Sindh the quota was further divided among the rural and urban areas, thus providing a permanent division among non Sindhi speaking urban population of Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur and ethnic Sindhis living in other parts of the province.         

The proviso was to expire in August 1984. By the time the date approached the country was under yet another Military government, which without much ado extended the period for another ten years.  The term expired in 1993. Government of the day, lead by late Benazir Bhutto lacked two third majority required in both houses of parliament to make constitutional changes. She continued with procedure nonetheless.

In 1999 Parliament passed constitution 16^th amendment act to extend the period allowed for the reservation of quota for another twenty years, effective of course from August 1993. Thus the discriminatory provision, which is otherwise in violation of the spirit of constitution that was initially allowed for a period of ten years, was extended for a total of forty years.  On Independence Day falling on Wednesday August 14, 2013 we will reach end of that forty years period.

Now the government, accepting its failure to bridge the gap between different regions and provinces has decided to extend the provision for another twenty years. The decision has been taken without doing any objective analysis of the policy.

The basic idea behind the policy is that there are stark differences in availability of educational and allied facilities among different regions of the country, making it necessary to protect the interest of the people of under developed areas.

However there are problems with the policy which have to be analyzed before approval of the amendment. Firstly,  despite providing for quotas to different areas since 1956 we have not been able to provide adequate representation to different provinces/ regions in government sector. This means that there is an inherent flaw in the policy which should be addressed.

Secondly, though there do exist a gap in infrastructural development among different regions of the country but the same is more visible within different regions of the province. Thus any provision of quota to a particular province or region is virtually used by more developed part of the province/ region keeping its under developed part out of the competition.

Thirdly, the reservation of quota impedes hardwork, initiative and sometimes works negatively for allocation of jobs for the people of same regions which the provision is meant to promote. For example every year there are not more than a couple of seats for the FATA , Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan to be allocated through CSS exam conducted by FPSC . Resultantly many able young people from the regions fail to get nomination despite qualifying due to insufficiency of quota for the regions and persons with lesser scores from regions of greater quota get selected. Many other in fact are discouraged from sitting in the exam due to same reason.           

More importantly availability of educational facilities in Pakistan can be categorized more on the basis of class and income group than by provinces, regions, religions and ethnicities. The kids of the rich and affluent as well as other privileged classes, irrespective of their area of residence, province, religion or sect, go to almost same type of schools [which are always English medium], have services of similar class of academic staff and allied facilities. Thus the sons of Baloch Sardars attend the same schools which tutor the scions of land lords of Punjab, Sindh and KPK as well as businessmen, industrialists and other affluent people from other regions of country. For these people there is no gap in the availability of the facilities. They do not need any sort of positive discrimination. Any reservation of seats for them is only division of booty among the members of the same class, which deprives the under privileged sections of the society.

On the other side is overwhelming majority which goes to government schools, lacking teachers, buildings and other facilities. While the rich originating from underdeveloped areas send their kids to better private as well  government run high gentry schools and colleges, the poor from the same area have to walk for miles to go to poorly run government schools which teach in Urdu.  Now at the top of the unfairness, the entry tests and examination for government post at higher grades are conducted in English in which the privileged rich have been taught not in Urdu in which these under privileged poor had to suffer.

If indeed there is any reserve quota is needed, it is for this section of the society. What is needed is to do away with the regional quota altogether. Most of the government jobs as well as seats in the professional colleges and universities should be put in a joint pool to be filled on the basis of strict merit. Some quota, for example twenty percent initially and to be reduced later should be fixed for those attending the rural and Urdu medium schools, are have studied and lived in the under-developed areas. The same facility may also be extended to the disabled and under privileged sections of the non Muslim communities. Yes under privileged sections of non Muslims, because it is the caste Hindus and Anglos among the Christians who get most of the benefits in the name of these communities while the under privileged sections of these communities suffer like their poor Muslim brothers and sisters.