Category: bureaucracy

Blunders happen. But then, there are blunders only bastards can perform with eloquence.

Fiscal year or financial year budget is of 12 months. “Year.” Our FY starts from 1st of very July and ends on 30th of June. Budget – both development and non-development – is for a complete FY. This also means, that all the un-utilized funds shall lapse on 30th of June. Departments try their best – which is at par with worse – to utilize maximum funds.

And utilization is by far the only KPI that bureaucracy knows. Anyway, we are discussing something else. Not bastards.

Since we had an ugly caretaker-cum-PCB setup in Punjab, the budget presented for FY 2023-24 was for July to October. Funds lapsed on 31st October. Interestingly, no one had idea that funds would lapse. Even Finance Department was clueless. You can’t even believe what kind of comedy that was.

Anyway, new budget was announced for November 2023 to February 2024. That also lapsed in the last week of February 2024.

And now, surprise, surprise! Budget has been announced for one month i.e., March 2024. From 1st March to 31st March. By the time funds will be released – i.e., mid of the month – it will also be the time for closing of the Financial Year. Or financial month.

What next? Budget for a week? It’s so gross.

That’s why I say you cannot sustain with bureaucracy anymore. Even good politicians cannot do anything good. They will innovate such ugly measures that nothing will happen yet the whole secretariat will look like an Emergency Department. Everyone is running. Doing nothing.

Smog covered Lahore for the first time when PMLN was in power. It sustained during PTI’s tenure. And then continued through PDM’s episode. It’s been a decade; got uglier this season.

Today, it covers three divisions. Like 9 cities. Successfully.

Do you know who remained constant all this while when political pawns were being placed and replaced? Bureaucracy. The suited booted CSS babus. Looking nice, intelligent, philosophical, and literary with only an iota of functioning brain.

‘Hierarchy of Bastards.’ In simple words.

Every season, the Chief Secretary calls a meeting. Before smog. During smog. Afterwards. Meetings and more meetings. And they end up as clueless as they always are.

And every season, we have a new Chief Secretary who doesn’t know what the previous one said in golden words. So, the same episodes are telecasted each season.

It is like joining a new department after messing up the previous one without any strings attached. Working hard and hardly working. That’s what CSS is about and that’s why people aspire one to be. Have all the resources with zero output, ignominious corruption, and no punishment.

Sky is the limit.

But they do have a comedic sense to the crises.

For instance, if you ask these bureaucrats how are they going to manage this smog, they may come back with out-of-the-box comments. They can tell you it is their “Family Planning” initiative to manage the challenge of population in the long-run. They will elaborate how it will reduce 7-years of people’s life and how it will resolve issues of crime, pension, food scarcity, and obviously, population.

They will brief the timeline. Like it was in a pilot mode a decade back, and now it is in Phase-II with three divisions covered.

Jokes apart, they can utter the same in public if they are given such notes by their subordinates. Remember that speech in 3 Idiots? That guy on dice reading whatever was in front of him could have been the most suitable candidate for CSS.

Anyway. Do you know how bureaucracy is overseeing Smog?

Multiple projects for the elite are in progress. DHA Lahore will be connected to Gulberg and Jail Road – signal free. Cavalry is closed for an underpass. Walton Road is closed for a bridge near Cavalry, while the nullah of that road is flowing on the road along with the traffic. Looks so nice.

Akbar Chowk is all messed up with an under-construction bridge for months.

Central Business District (CBD) – or you can call next level real estate work of civil and military establishment – is in full progress. This should have been the Central Park of Lahore to mitigate smog, but boys thought to make money out of it. They even threw Walton Airport out of the city for this billion-dollar business. For elites. Not you. A new road will connect Walton from Packages’ side to Kalma Chowk.

More concrete is being laid in the city. More and more. Less space for trees. Less space for oxygen.

But worry not. The bureaucrats are managing it will. Some decades down the road, people will remember how population crises was handled. With smog.

It’s like Lahore’s bureaucracy against South Punjab in general. And usual.

While the venue is always Lahore.

You have a problem?

Come to Lahore from Alipur, Muzaffargarh, D. G. Khan, R. Y. Khan, Fort Munro, Rajanpur, Multan, and Bahawalpur.

Come to Lahore for interviews. To submit an application. For the Ombudsman’s hearing. To meet a Secretary. To beg a Section Officer. To pay the bribe. To wait in corridors. For all the routine ugly stuff for your disgrace.

But, most probably, as soon as you enter, the Babu may have left already. Or the meeting has been postponed. Or the mood. Mood swings without PMS.

PMS. Some of them are from PMS actually. But mostly are CSS. It’s a federally owned curse in the whole country.

Anyway.

Lahore had been brutal today. At least in the later half.

And Multan should lose. To keep the records straight.