Asad Ashraf Malik
It is the hoarding of power not its devolution that endangers a federation.
The Economist has dressed an old political suspicion in the sophisticated vocabulary of political analysis: that creating smaller provinces in Pakistan is an exercise by Establishment in “divide and rule”, designed to fragment political opposition, manufacture new political fiefdoms and ultimately weaken the federation.
It may seem a striking argument to some, but its apparent arguement conceals a fundamental fallacy: the confusion of dividing a nation with distributing power. The two are not synonymous. Indeed,the latter can be the surest defence against the former.
Switzerland stands as a magnificent rebuttal to the notion that smaller constituent units necessarily threaten national cohesion. With its 26 cantons and more than 2,000 communes, this small European country has demonstrated that political authority can be distributed without its national identity dissolving into a thousand competing fragments. Its citizens retain their common Swiss identity while exercising authority through their cantons and local institutions.
Switzerland is not a blueprint that Pakistan can simply photocopy. Its history, institutions and political culture are different. But its existence demolishes any universal proposition that smaller administrative units must inevitably weaken a country. Its lesson is simple: national unity does not require the geographical gigantism of constituent units; it requires institutions that make diverse communities willing participants in a common national enterprise.
A great tree does not fear the spreading of its branches. It draws strength from roots that bind them to a common trunk.
Why, then, should Pakistan treat the creation of additional provinces as an act of national dismemberment before examining whether such reform could make government more accessible, representation more equitable and accountability more effective?
The Economist’s argument also appears to suggest that because politicians might exploit provincial reorganisation for their own advantage, the reform itself must be suspect. This is a curious standard of judgment. Politicians can manipulate existing provinces, exploit electoral boundaries, distribute patronage and capture public institutions without creating a single new administrative unit. The possibility of political abuse is not proof that a constitutional reform is inherently destructive.
The appropriate question is not whether political opportunists might seek to benefit from smaller provinces. It is whether the proposed arrangement, properly designed, would serve citizens better than the existing one. Motives must be scrutinised, certainly, but outcomes, institutions and safeguards must be scrutinised even more carefully.
To reject decentralisation because it can be abused is to confuse the imperfection of a remedy with the inevitability of its failure.
India offers a brief but instructive example. Since independence, it has created new states, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Telangana, to accommodate linguistic, regional and administrative demands.
The Indian Union has survived these changes. This does not prove that every reorganisation succeeds, but it decisively challenges the proposition that new constituent units necessarily destroy national unity.
Bangladesh offers a different lesson. Its separation in 1971 was not caused by the creation of smaller provinces; it followed political exclusion, economic grievances, cultural alienation;and most important was the denial of an electoral mandate. Its history warns us that a country can lose its cohesion when its people are denied a meaningful stake in the state. Preserving boundaries alone cannot compensate for the erosion of political legitimacy.
The argument that smaller provinces would encourage separatism is equally incomplete.
Separatist sentiment does not arise automatically from the multiplication of administrative units. It can arise from prolonged exclusion, perceived injustice, unequal opportunity and the conviction that peaceful demands will never receive a fair hearing. No constitutional arrangement can guarantee the disappearance of such grievances, but a responsive state has a far better chance of addressing them than one that mistakes silence for loyalty.
The creation of a province is no magic wand. It cannot, by itself, eliminate corruption, create prosperity or guarantee competent leadership. But neither can the preservation of four provinces perform those miracles. The relevant question is whether a different administrative structure, accompanied by meaningful devolution and accountability, could improve the conditions under which those problems are addressed.
To demand perfection from a proposed reform while granting the existing system an indefinite exemption from scrutiny is to rig the argument before the debate has even begun.
There is, moreover, a distinction The Economist’s thesis risks overlooking: dividing political authority is not the same as dividing sovereignty. A new province would remain within Pakistan’s constitutional framework, subject to the Constitution and the laws of the federation. The country’s international identity, national citizenship and sovereign status would not automatically be diminished by a change in its internal administrative map.
The real safeguards of national unity are constitutional integrity, democratic legitimacy, effective institutions and a shared commitment to the federation—not the sheer size of provincial territories.
Pakistan must therefore reject both reckless fragmentation and blind attachment to the status quo. Any proposal for new provinces should be examined on its merits, with careful attention to public consent, economic viability, administrative capacity, minority rights and constitutional requirements. If a proposal fails those tests, it should be rejected for its defects. If it passes them, it should not be condemned merely because it challenges established political arrangements.
One Pakistan. One Constitution. One national identity.
But not necessarily an immutable number of provinces, nor an unquestioned monopoly of authority in a handful of enormous capitals.
Switzerland’s cantons have not dissolved Switzerland. India’s changing state boundaries have not automatically dissolved the Indian Union. Bangladesh’s tragic history warns against political exclusion, not against every alteration of administrative boundaries. None of these experiences guarantees success for Pakistan, but together they undermine the simplistic equation of smaller units with a weaker nation.
The real measure of a federation is not the acreage governed by each provincial capital. It is the confidence with which citizens can claim their place within the national enterprise.
A country is not a glass vessel that shatters whenever its internal compartments are rearranged. It is a living covenant between its people, sustained by justice, representation, opportunity and mutual trust.
The danger to Pakistan is not necessarily that its provinces may become smaller. It is that its political monopolies may remain too large, its neglected regions too voiceless and its people too distant from the power exercised in their name.
Let us not mistake devolution for dismemberment, representation for rebellion or constitutional reform for national suicide.
The question is not whether Pakistan can survive smaller provinces. The more searching question is whether Pakistan can achieve its fullest potential while so many citizens continue to believe that the corridors of power belong to others.
Switzerland offers a powerful reminder that a nation can remain whole while distributing authority among its constituent parts. Pakistan must find its own constitutional path towards that principle—not by imitating another country mechanically, but by placing its own citizens at the heart of the federation.
For national unity cannot be sustained merely by insisting that the map must never change. It must be earned through a state that listens, a government that serves and a political system that allows every region to feel that it belongs.
A federation is not strengthened when power is hoarded in the name of unity. It is strengthened when power is shared in the service of unity.
And that is the fundamental fallacy in The Economist’s argument: it mistakes the preservation of existing political arrangements for the preservation of the nation itself.—The author is a former I.G.Police and former Ombudsman.