The ongoing speculative and confusing discussions on the need to have ‘more provinces’, later altered to ‘more administrative units’, were triggered after the worthy Interior Minister made a speech confessing ‘System Collapse’; besides, describing the ‘manifold increase in population’ as the main problem and the need to improve the ‘System’ by further division of the State of Pakistan into more provinces. Ostensibly, the statement was made as a tester to gauge public opinion as well as the controversial Form 47 ruling club’s response. As planned, the said speech and remarks created panic, confusion, jubilation and a range of other feelings expressed by different stakeholders as per their hopes, aspirations and fears. Besides, so far it has served as a partial distraction from unaffordable energy prices, crippling inflation, political victimisation and the tricky ‘walk on a tightrope’ on the external front.

One needs to analyse the ongoing rudderless statements and discussions about the need to create more provinces in Pakistan, keeping in mind some international and domestic cases. For example, the dissolution of the Ottoman Khilafat/Empire into a large number of countries, division of Sudan, Indonesia and Malaysia; and internally, the tragedy of Pakistan resulting in the turning of East Pakistan into Bangladesh, the One Unit formula, LFO, late 1960s deliberations on more provinces and administrative units in Pakistan, like what was done in Spain, and General Musharraf’s Devolution of Power through Local Bodies. And above all, the present state of law and........

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