A RECENT World Bank report has looked into the NFC Award post-18th Amendment and provided some interesting details. For instance, it has shown how the bulk of the money seems to have gone into expanding local bureaucracies in health and education. It notes that 80 per cent of provincial spending is recurrent spending (a fancy way of saying it goes towards salaries and similar expenditures). It also argues that higher spending hasn’t improved health and education indicators all that much. Among other issues, the report has pointed out the provinces’ failure to shape rules for the fair and institutionalised distribution of funds to the local level. Even where the rules are clear or formalised, fund distribution remains patchy and is dependent on the provincial government’s largesse.
In fact, the report points out that spending at the local government level had fallen from 10pc in 2005 to 5pc by 2011; it has remained stuck at this number. For the sake of contrast, India spends 12pc at the LG level, Nepal 24pc and China 74pc. In other words, regardless of when LGs were introduced in the provinces and whether or not elections were held regularly, they have remained limited financially. It seems as if the provinces which have jealously guarded their own share of the NFC from the centre have also protected it equally passionately from the local level.
The report mentions that because devolution did not expand further, the 18th Amendment has made the financial burden at the federal level excessive, while the provinces have little reason to improve governance or delivery. This is not to say, however, that the federal government is blameless; it has not made any effort to reduce its expenses and has, in fact, added to the salary bill, despite the devolution of a number of ministries to the provinces. The number of employees of the devolved ministries has stayed around 25,000 since the amendment was passed. The report says that employment in the non-devolved ministries has increased by 85pc. Both the federal and provincial levels have continued to hire at a breathtaking speed.
The report goes on to talk about problem areas such as the lack of accountability or the gap between taxation and revenue. It has focused on financial and delivery issues and not really discussed the political side of it for obvious reasons. But for those of us who understand very little economics and find politics easier, the 18th Amendment had an extraordinary effect on the politics of the country.
The 18th Amendment, which was aimed at boosting democracy, ended up weakening it in some ways.
The first rather obvious impact is that, other than Balochistan, the 18th Amendment consolidated the rule of three parties in the three provinces — the PTI in KP, the PPP in Sindh and the PML-N in Punjab. One can go so far as to say that the amendment has allowed the political parties to entrench themselves in their respective provinces by establishing patronage-based systems. This is why the only time there is a threat to their presence or ‘popularity’ is when there is a civil-military rift. This is why the 2018 election led to a change in Punjab. The point here is not to say that the people will never vote for change but just that the systems set up in each province will not yield easily to a change of parties.
Second, to some extent the 18th Amendment left the two traditional parties little reason to preserve their federal nature. Unlike the 1990s, when the PPP and PML-N strived hard to guard their political space outside their main provinces — the PML-N took an interest in Sindh and parts of the KP while the PPP was a significant player in KP and Punjab — the amendment simply shrank their political horizons.
The PPP is willing to make any compromise possible as long as it retains Sindh. Consider that the party has been unwilling to share funds with the former Fata region even though the security situation in KP can and will spill over into the rest of the country. The party’s efforts to mobilise in Punjab or KP since 2008 have been cosmetic and superficial. No one takes it seriously, not even the party’s own provincial leadership. The PML-N has behaved no differently, focusing federal spending on building road networks in Punjab or putting up a coal power plant in the province. Where it once had senior people leading the party in provinces such as Sindh, it now has no electable face present.
It is worth pointing out that this deliberate ‘shrinking’ also created the vacuum which led to the rise of the PTI; the voters wanting a choice in Sindh or Punjab had no option but to look for a third option because the older parties were no longer interested. This can be one factor behind the popularity of the PTI.
Third, the amendment has also allowed all three parties to turn the provinces into fiefdoms. What this means is that MNAs and MPAs are now entirely dependent on the party ruling the province that they belong to. No longer can they survive with the assistance or support of a party that perhaps is not in a position to win the provincial assembly. This is evident in the manner in which anti-PPP pockets in Sindh have joined the party, as well as in the inability of any electable to survive outside the PTI umbrella in KP. This also means that the politicians are so dependent on the party that there can be no dissent or difference of opinion. Indeed, the 18th Amendment, which was aimed at strengthening democracy or provincial rights, ironically ended up weakening it in some ways.
This, however, is not meant to provide justification for the rollback of the amendment but to simply point out that the 18th Amendment should have been one moment in the journey towards devolution and better services — rather than the destination the political leadership wants it to be. The sooner they realise it and fix the problem, the better — before there is external intervention.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2026
