IT was both distressing and disgusting to read Syed Saadat’s article ‘I am corrupt, honestly’ in this paper on Jan 20 on the conditions in Pakistan’s civil service whose members are taunted as ‘babus’ and labelled as elites but whose conditions of service today match, at best, those of the subordinate services of yesteryear and at worst the clerical services of the 1960s and 1970s. Mr Saadat’s sentiments reflect the frustration of the civil services and must be addressed urgently.

My children laugh when I tell them that when I joined the civil service as an information service probationer in 1971 my take-home salary was Rs485 per month. Tea or coffee at the Intercontinental Hotel in Rawalpindi was Rs5 a cup and mutton not more than Rs5 a kilo. A Lahore-Rawalpindi round trip in an airconditioned rail car was for about Rs40. You could buy a US dollar for Rs4 and a tola of gold for a few hundred rupees.

For most of the year that we were at the Civil Service Academy in Lahore, our monthly mess bill averaged Rs225. That included a breakfast of eggs and cereal, mid-morning coffee, lunch with two dishes and fresh fruit, afternoon tea with snacks and dinner that started with soup and ended with dessert. And the lavish mess nights, once a month, were part of the bill. We could tip generously, we could watch movies, buy new clothes and order new suits in winter. That being the cost of living then, a salary of Rs485 per month was not lordly but certainly enough for a comfortable living.

Forty years later in 2011, the bag of wheat flour that sold for Rs10 now sells for Rs600. Gold is touching Rs40,000 per tola. A bus ride from Rawalpindi to Lahore and back on Daewoo is nearly Rs2,000 against Rs20 that we paid for a wagon ride then. Mutton now sells for Rs450 and a ticket to Cinepax in Rawalpindi to watch a movie averages Rs500 against the Rs1.50 that we paid in 1971-72. A good quality made-to-measure woollen suit that we could order for an average of Rs250 then now costs about Rs8,000.

With this cost of living, an officer joining the Civil Service Academy in Lahore today would draw a salary of Rs17,765 per month. A year later, when he moves to his place of posting, his total emoluments would be Rs24,730 including house rent, conveyance and medical allowances. Now compare this with the pay that a graduate from IBA, LUMS, GIK or NUST draws on his first appointment — Rs50,000 if he is not lucky enough and perhaps Rs.100,000 if he is a little above the average.

I have gone into such detail only to underscore the fact that while the need to draw nothing but the best human resource to the various cadres of the civil service was never greater, we as a nation are doing just the opposite.

In the Pakistan of 1950s and 1960s and for a good half of the 1970s, the civil services offered the best career for young graduates. The working environment was respectable, salaries reasonable and jobs fairly secure. The corporate sector had yet not developed. The banking and insurance sector was conservative and slow to grow. IT and telecom had not emerged and only a handful of multinationals were in business here. The civil services were the number one choice. And we thus had a strong and efficient administrative machinery that served as the steel frame even as the political structure crumbled every now and then.

The same services produced master planners, internationally recognised financial managers and policy planners that were the envy of governments beyond our frontiers. Can we hold on to this claim today? Unfortunately not. Why? Because for the past 30 years, we have been drawing, with a few exceptions, only the average and even below average talent to the civil services of Pakistan. As banking and financial services grew, the corporate sector expanded and IT and telecom hit the scene, the talented young of Pakistan suddenly had a wide choice of lucrative careers. In contrast, the government remained unmoved. No thought was given to the fast-changing scenario. With salaries stagnating, facilities shrinking and respectability and security no longer the inbuilt feature, the civil service was no longer a magnet for the youth. It is no wonder then that the civil servants of today like Syed Saadat exhibit such cynicism. He is wrong but how can we pronounce him so unless we change his course, remove the irritants that are strewn in his career path and give him hope not despair, offer him security of service and provide him a respectable living. We will do that not as a favour to him but as a deliberate effort to draw the best talent to the civil services of this country that is falling apart. And if the steel frame collapses, what would follow?

During my tenure as a federal secretary, I kept urging the then heads of government to give some thought to this crisis that was and would continue to badly affect governance. Unfortunately, I was heard but not listened to. Given our financial problems, we shall never be able to offer market-based salaries to the millions of public-sector employees. But the government can surely offer that to the few thousand civil service members belonging to the different occupational groups joining through the Central Superior Services examination. That would be the best investment this nation can make even though its results will take time to bear fruit.