By Kainaat Asad
Abstract
Pakistan, with a population surpassing 250 million in 2025, is now the fifth most populous country in the world. Its federal architecture consists of four large provinces, institutions designed for a much smaller polity, and metropolitan agglomerations governed through fragmented agencies that struggle to deliver essential services, enforce the rule of law, and provide political voice across diverse regions. This article argues that administrative subdivision of existing provinces, pursued for reasons of governance efficiency and representation rather than ethnic engineering, is an urgent policy instrument for Pakistan. Drawing on fiscal federalism, institutional-capacity theory, and comparative experience from India, Nigeria, and Indonesia, it demonstrates how smaller, carefully drawn provinces or specially empowered metropolitan units can improve service delivery, strengthen fiscal accountability, and overcome political unrest. The paper concludes with practical design principles, illustrative models (6, 8, and 12 provinces’ options), and a conflict-sensitive implementation roadmap.
- Introduction
The map of a state is not merely ink on paper; it is the skeleton of public life where schools open, courts function, hospitals operate, and citizens seek redress. Pakistan’s contemporary political map remains, in important respects, a relic of the mid-20th-century institutional arrangements. The province of Punjab now governs roughly 127 million people, more than many sovereign states in the world, while Sindh stretches from the megacity of Karachi to arid interior districts; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has absorbed formerly distinct polities (ex-FATA), and Balochistan’s vast geography is administered from a distant capital with limited reach and meagre resources. The result is administrative gaps, uneven public goods provision, and recurrent political mobilization around perceived marginalization.
A pragmatic question arises when redesigning provincial boundary surfaces: How should Pakistan redraw its provincial boundaries, if at all, to improve management and governance without igniting nationalist conflict? The answer proposed here is not a single map but a principled approach: use administrative and service-delivery criteria (travel-time, fiscal viability, metropolitan scale), back them with transparent evidence, and pair any boundary change with binding fiscal and political safeguards. Subdivision, done this way, is an instrument of state-building: it brings government closer to citizens, clarifies accountability, and stabilizes a federation under demographic pressure.
- Why is Subdivision Urgent and Necessary?
2.1 Governance Overload: Scale and Capacity Mismatch
Institutional-capacity theory emphasizes the match between the scale of public problems and administrative structures. When a single provincial apparatus is asked to manage tens of millions of citizens across diverse terrains and service needs, bottlenecks multiply. Decision cycles lengthen, local problems are deferred, and provincial departments become gatekeepers rather than facilitators. Punjab’s size creates systemic overload; the provincial Education or Health Department effectively manages more institutions than ministries in many medium-sized countries, stretching inspection, procurement, and human-resource capacity to breaking point.
2.2 Federalism and Representation: The Proximity Principle
Fiscal federalism argues that many public goods are best provided by the smallest jurisdiction whose boundaries encompass most beneficiaries. When provinces are as large as nations, provincial governments struggle to tailor services to heterogeneous local preferences. Citizens in South Punjab or Makran face long travel times to reach provincial courts, secretariats, or tertiary hospitals—practical barriers that erode the social contract. Subdivision re-orients governance to the proximity principle: policy decisions and service delivery are made nearer to those they affect, increasing responsiveness and democratic accountability.
2.3 Political Stability: Reducing the Salience of Grievances
Nationalist mobilization in regions such as Balochistan, interior Sindh, Hazara, and parts of southern Punjab is often rooted less in immutable ethnic identity than in a perception of political and fiscal exclusion. Lijphart’s consociationalism insights and later work on polycentric governance proposed by Elinor Ostrom suggest that institutional inclusion and voice can defuse identity-driven conflict. A province that offers real administrative power, a share of revenues, and visible investments changes the calculus of grievance politics: it becomes harder for spoilers to credibly promise exclusionary outcomes when institutional channels exist for participation.
- A Comparative Global Evidence
3.1 India: Incremental Reorganisation for Governance
India’s state system evolved from a small set of large states at independence to 28 states and several union territories. The creation of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand in 2000, driven by long-standing demands for administrative access and better management of local resources, offers instructive lessons. In many of these newly formed states, regional budgets are now closer to local needs, and political representation is more immediate. Importantly, India’s process combined evidence (commissions), political bargaining, and constitutional procedures, an approach Pakistan could emulate.
3.2 Nigeria: Granular Federalism and Representation
Nigeria expanded from 3 regions at independence to 36 states by the 1990s, a process motivated by the need to accommodate ethnic plurality and distribute resource rents. Fragmentation increased local representation and helped contain secessionist pressures by embedding minorities in their own political units, albeit at the cost of higher recurrent expenditure and increased clientelism when checks were weak. The Nigerian case is a caution: subdivision should be accompanied by strict fiscal rules and institutional checks to prevent patronage expansion.
3.3 Indonesia: Pemekaran and Local Responsiveness
Indonesia’s pemekaran (administrative subdivision) after decentralization in 1999 generated many new provinces and districts to disperse power away from Jakarta, the capital city of the country. Where the system was implemented with local capacity-building, it improved service reach in remote areas; where it was enforced without robust fiscal equalization, it produced fragile local administrations. The key lesson is that administrative splitting without credible financial and human-resource arrangements risks creating hollow institutions.
- Pathways for Subdivision in Pakistan
4.1 Principles for Division (non-exhaustive)
- Administrative Accessibility — majority threshold: design provinces so that a high percentage (e.g., ≥80%) of residents are within a 4–6 hour all-weather travel time of the provincial capital or an empowered regional secretariat.
- Minimum Viable Scale — aim for provinces whose populations enable economies of scale for higher education, tertiary healthcare, and specialized regulatory institutions. A pragmatic target band is 8–15 million, with exceptions for large metros (Karachi) and sparse territories (Balochistan).
- Fiscal Base & Viability — evaluate own-source revenue prospects (sales tax on services, property taxes, and stamp duties) and prepare a model 3–5 year transition finance needs.
- Service-Catchment Integrity — avoid slicing established referral networks (hospital catchments, irrigation basins) between provinces without joint management protocols.
- Non-Ethnic Framing — the rationale must remain administrative and performance-oriented to prevent identity-driven mobilization.
4.2 Illustrative Models (operational sketches)
- 6-Province Model (Low Disruption): create South Punjab (Multan–Bahawalpur–D.G. Khan) and a Karachi Metropolitan Province, leave other provinces largely intact. Quickly address the two most acute governance failures: Punjab overload and Karachi’s metropolitan fragmentation.
- 8-Province Model (Balanced Reform): split Punjab (North/Central/South balance), split Sindh (Karachi metro + interior), create a Hazara province in KP, and divide Balochistan into north (Quetta-focused) and south/coastal units for corridor management. This balances scale with reach.
- 12-Province Model (Transformational): elevate several divisional units into provinces to maximize administrative proximity closest to Nigeria’s granularity. Requires the strongest fiscal and institutional controls.
Each model must be stress-tested using travel-time isochrones, district-level population data (PBS 2023), and five-year fiscal projections before being advanced politically.
- How Subdivision Improves Governance
5.1 Service Delivery: Shorter Chains, Faster Response
Smaller provincial cabinets and secretariats reduce decision latency. Health inspectors, education officers, and procurement officers report within shorter hierarchies, improving monitoring and reducing leakage. For instance, a dedicated provincial health administration in South Punjab could allocate budgets directly to local referral hospitals and recruit staff attuned to regional disease profiles, something currently constrained under a Lahore-centric bureaucracy.
5.2 Fiscal Management and Accountability
Subdivision allows clearer mapping between taxpayers, services, and budgets. Provincial Finance Commissions (PFCs) can calibrate transfers by poverty and service gaps. Crucially, fiscal equalization mechanisms must be built into transition rules to prevent impoverished new provinces from becoming permanently dependent. A temporary Transition Fund (3–5 years) and guaranteed NFC adjustment can smooth the fiscal shock.
5.3 Political Inclusion and Local Voice
New provinces create provincial legislatures where previously marginalized regions now hold decisive majorities. Hazara, for example, would move from being a minority voice within KP to having its own provincial institutions, improving representation in high court benches, provincial bureaucracy appointments, and development planning, etc.
5.4 Metropolitan Governance: Solving Karachi’s Fragmentation
Karachi’s governance failure is a classic polycentric problem: many agencies with overlapping mandates and unclear accountability. A city-province or specially empowered metropolitan authority with consolidated revenue access (a share of sales tax on services generated in the metropolis, local property/right-of-way levies) can internalize urban spillovers transport, waste, and water, and reduce deadly coordination failures.
5.5 Conflict Mitigation: Institutions that Channel Grievances
When governance is proximate, citizens are more likely to use institutional channels (councils, ombudsmen, courts) rather than street mobilization. Subdivision, paired with minority safeguards and rapid grievance mechanisms, reduces the attractiveness of nationalist agitation as a strategy.
- Policy Mechanisms to Avoid Unrest and Ensure Success
6.1 Independent Boundary & Transition Commission (IBTC)
Mandate a time-bound IBTC that publishes: travel-time maps, service-gap diagnostics, fiscal simulations, and a public record of hearings. Composition: retired jurist chair, fiscal experts, GIS/demography specialists, conflict advisers, civil society representatives, and district-level delegates. Transparency of data and methodology is the single strongest vaccine against conspiracy narratives.
6.2 Transition Act: Legal & Fiscal Guarantees
Parliament should pass a Transition Act simultaneously with any constitutional amendment. Core elements: creation of a Transition Fund (federal seed capital for 3–5 years), explicit revenue-sharing rules for the first five years, civil-service transfer options (secondment, merger, voluntary retirement), asset/liability division schedules, and expedited dispute-resolution mechanisms (mixed tribunal of jurists and technical experts).
6.3 Phasing and Pilots
Begin with low-hanging, high-impact pilots in South Punjab and metropolitan Karachi arrangements. Pilot results provide empirical evidence to defuse political contestation for broader reform.
6.4 Representation & Interim Governance
Interim Provincial Councils with proportional district representation and reserved seats for women and minorities should manage affairs until the first post-reform elections. This political inclusion reduces elite displacement fears.
6.5 Security & Conflict-Sensitive Implementation
Train police in rights-based crowd management; deploy security not to suppress legitimate protest but to prevent violence. Establish early-warning grievance hotlines, mobile dispute resolution units, and fast-track judicial benches for transition disputes.
6.6 Narrative and Communications Strategy
A consistent public narrative is essential: “bringing government closer to people” rather than “redrawing ethnic maps.” Use public fact-sheets, district-level fiscal simulations, and independent third-party observers to inoculate the process against misinformation.
- Implications for Pakistan’s Future
7.1 Administrative Renewal and Economic Opportunity
Smaller, better-governed provinces can catalyze local economic development by aligning industrial policy, vocational training, and infrastructure with regional comparative advantages. Coastal provinces with direct control over ports and hinterlands (e.g., a south-Balochistan unit centered on Gwadar) can coordinate corridor development without distant bureaucratic friction.
7.2 Democratization and Trust in Institutions
When citizens see provincial legislatures that are responsive, turnout and civic engagement rise. Over time, this thickens democratic practice and reduces the political salience of extra-institutional mobilization.
7.3 Federal Resilience
A federation that distributes power across several viable provinces is less prone to center–periphery breakdowns. Strategic fragmentation, paradoxically, can secure national unity by accommodating diversity within durable institutional frameworks.
- Conclusion and Recommendations
Pakistan’s demographic reality demands administrative modernization. Subdivision of provinces pursued transparently, grounded in evidence, and accompanied by fiscal and political guarantees is not a recipe for fragmentation; it is a pragmatic path to stronger governance, fairer representation, and reduced political volatility.
Key Recommendations:
- Mandate an Independent Boundary & Transition Commission immediately to test 6, 8, and 12-province scenarios using district-level PBS (2023) data, travel-time isochrones, and five-year fiscal models.
- Adopt a phased approach for South Punjab and Karachi metropolitan reform, evaluate it, and iterate.
- Legislate a Transition Act that guarantees transition finance, revenue-sharing rules, civil-service continuity, and dispute-resolution.
- Embed strong communication and grievance systems to manage perception, counter misinformation, and provide rapid redress.
- Reform the NFC to incorporate new provinces and ensure equalization mechanisms for weaker units.
If Pakistan treats boundaries as instruments of governance rather than as immutable identity markers, it can transform the dilemma of size into an opportunity for renewal. The map can become not a constraint but a scaffold for better government _ closer to people, fairer, and more capable of meeting the demands of its citizens in the twenty-first century.
