The republic cannot solve twenty-first-century problems with a twentieth-century state.
Every generation inherits a nation. A fortunate generation improves it. A rare generation redesigns it. History remembers such moments not because governments changed, but because societies discovered that their institutions no longer matched their ambitions. The American republic emerged stronger after rewriting the relationship between the Union and its states. Germany rebuilt itself after the catastrophe of war. Singapore transformed a vulnerable city into one of the world’s most capable states by deliberately redesigning public institutions. South Korea turned poverty into prosperity by building institutions that rewarded competence, education and innovation.
These nations were not rescued by extraordinary leaders alone. They were renewed because they possessed the courage to rethink the architecture of the state itself. Pakistan has arrived at a similar moment. The recent admission by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi that “the system has collapsed” should be understood not as a political controversy but as a constitutional warning. Millions of Pakistanis already experience the consequences every day. Inflation, unemployment, fiscal instability, failing public services, recurring constitutional crises, weak local governance and declining public trust appear to be separate problems. They are not. They are different expressions of the same underlying reality.
Pakistan is attempting to solve twenty-first-century challenges with institutions largely designed for a different century. For decades, our national conversation has mistaken symptoms for causes. Governments blame their predecessors. Opposition parties promise better management. International financial institutions prescribe economic adjustments. Experts recommend administrative reforms. Yet the same crises return with remarkable regularity because the deeper question remains untouched: what if Pakistan’s principal challenge is not the quality of individual governments but the design of the state itself?
Modern states, like living organisms, must evolve or decline. Institutions created for one historical context eventually become inadequate for another. Pakistan inherited much of its administrative philosophy from a colonial system designed to maintain order, collect revenue and centralize authority. Independence transferred sovereignty to Pakistanis, but it did not fully transform that governing philosophy.
The Pakistan of 1947 and the Pakistan of today are profoundly different countries. The republic has grown from roughly thirty million citizens to more than 240 million. It is increasingly urban, digitally connected, economically complex and environmentally vulnerable. Yet many governing assumptions remain remarkably unchanged. Authority continues to flow upward while responsibility flows downward. Decisions affecting millions are often made far from the communities they affect. Citizens frequently encounter government not as a responsive public institution but as a distant administrative structure.
The consequences are visible across every sector. An economy repeatedly dependent on external rescue packages. Provinces competing over resources rather than cooperating to create prosperity. Courts burdened by endless delays. Cities expanding faster than they can be governed. Young graduates seeking futures abroad because they doubt the state’s capacity to create opportunities at home. None of these problems exists in isolation. Together they reveal a republic whose institutional foundations require renewal.
This is why Pakistan needs more than periodic reforms. It needs what might be called a second founding. A second founding does not mean abandoning the Constitution or beginning anew. It means recovering the Constitution’s highest purpose: creating institutions capable of securing liberty, justice, opportunity and human dignity for every citizen. It means recognizing that constitutional democracy is not a finished achievement but an ongoing act of institutional design.
Such renewal should rest on four principles. First, power must move closer to the citizen. No democracy becomes stronger by concentrating authority indefinitely. Pakistan requires genuinely empowered local governments with constitutional protection, fiscal autonomy and regular elections. Citizens experience the republic through schools, clinics, sanitation, transport and neighborhood safety, not through constitutional slogans.
Second, the federation itself requires thoughtful rebalancing. Administrative boundaries should serve effective governance rather than historical habit. Mature federations periodically redesign their internal structures to reflect demographic and economic realities. Within that broader conversation, the proposal for a Saraiki province deserves to be debated not merely as a question of identity but as part of a wider constitutional effort to create a more balanced and administratively responsive federation.
Third, Pakistan must replace the politics of short-term survival with institutions capable of long-term national planning. Education, scientific research, industrial policy, water security, technological innovation and climate resilience cannot be reinvented every electoral cycle. Durable institutions should protect long-term national priorities from short-term political instability.
Finally, the republic must once again place the citizen at the center of public life. The purpose of government is not to preserve governments. It is to enlarge the capabilities of the people. A successful state is measured not by the authority it accumulates but by the opportunities it creates: the child who receives an excellent education regardless of birthplace, the entrepreneur who succeeds because of innovation rather than influence, the farmer whose productivity depends on knowledge rather than patronage, and the young graduate who sees a future within Pakistan instead of beyond it.
Nations ultimately rise or decline according to the quality of their institutions. Wealth, military strength and natural resources matter. But history repeatedly demonstrates that institutions determine whether those advantages are transformed into lasting prosperity.
Pakistan’s founders gave the country political independence. Our generation faces a different responsibility. We must ensure that the republic possesses institutions worthy of the aspirations of its people and resilient enough to meet the challenges of the century ahead. Hence, the most important question before Pakistan is no longer who governs. It is whether we possess the imagination, and the constitutional courage, to build a republic equal to its future.
