Pakistan Revisited: Notes of A Sentimental Arm-Chair Journey (Review Article )

Hardly more than a decade ago a student of the Pakistani administrative system and civil service was compelled to feel his way very much in the dark, There was no Constitution, and the Government of India Act of 1935, as amended, illuminated somewhat imperfectly the powers of government. The Rules of Business, the Book of Financial Powers, and the Secretariat Instruc¬tions were little more than irrelevant collections, hastily cobbled together, of regulations prevailing in the government of undivided India. A few reports on Pakistani public administration were available. Some of these were very bad, such as the Report of the Pakistan Pay Commission of 1949. Some of them were very good, such as the Jeffries Report on the Development of Organization and Methods Work in the Pakistan Government of 1952. Some of them were good within the limits they set for themselves, such as Creagh Coen’s Report of the Administrative Enquiry Committee of 1953. But in the main they were confined to essentially myopic investigations, they were informed primarily by the past, they drew their inspiration from gazing raptly in the mirror of the Indian Civil Service, and they were altogether unconscious of the extraordinary require¬ments of a new Nation to which the Past was but Prologue.