SINCE 1947, approximately 40 commissions, committees and taskforces have attempted to reform Pakistan’s civil service, and the core themes have been remarkably similar: merit over seniority, competitive pay to reduce corruption, better mid-career training, and curbing the dominance of the elite generalist cadre over specialist services. Despite these efforts, bureaucracy has proved stubbornly resistant to change.
This is even more urgent amid the current debate on creating new provinces or administrative units, since no attempt to fix systemic governance failures can succeed unless the civil service architecture is reformed first. Layering governance reform onto the bureaucracy as it stands would only expand an already bloated apparatus, without empowering citizens.
From the 1950 Gladieux Report and 1962 Cornelius Commission to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 1973 reforms, which abolished the Civil Service of Pakistan cadre on paper but stripped away constitutional protections and opened the door to political victimisation, to the Ishrat Husain Commission (2006-08) and successive task forces, each produced recommendations that stalled at implementation, including the 2023-25 Ahsan Iqbal-led committee’s 48 proposals on recruitment, training and compensation.
