Pakistan debates whether new provinces can fix governance challenges

Pakistan's government is wrestling with a question that sounds simple but carries enormous weight: can drawing new lines on a map fix how the country actually works? With 260 million people spread across four provinces, senior officials are now openly debating whether those four units—Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan—have simply grown too large and too centralized to govern effectively.

Ahsan Iqbal, the minister for planning and development, has proposed a dramatic restructuring: create 12 to 15 new provinces, or alternatively, establish 160 empowered district governments. His argument is straightforward: the current system has failed to deliver adequate improvements in health, education, and basic public services. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who first raised the idea of an administrative "reset" in July, has echoed the concern, suggesting that any new administrative units should be created with public backing. Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has added his voice, calling for greater decentralization and a shift of power toward the grassroots. Yet despite these high-level calls for reform, no formal decision has been made, and even within the ruling coalition, disagreement persists over how and when such changes should happen.

The appeal of the proposal is understandable. Supporters argue that smaller provinces would be more responsive, less bureaucratic, and better positioned to deliver services to their populations. But a growing chorus of economists, policy experts, and political scientists is raising a harder question: does creating more provinces actually solve the problem, or does it merely shuffle the deck? Miftah Ismail, a former finance minister and economist, told reporters that smaller provinces alone are not enough. "Even with smaller provinces, you will still need empowered local governments to make the system effective and improve service delivery," he said. The real issue, in other words, may not be the number of provinces but the distribution of actual power.

Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, frames the question in practical terms. Any proposal for new provinces should be measured against concrete outcomes: Will local tax collection improve? What will it cost to build new provincial institutions—secretariats, assemblies, bureaucracies? Will justice and public services actually reach people more effectively? These are not rhetorical questions. They are the difference between administrative reshuffling and genuine reform. Muhammad Shoaib, a political scientist at Quaid-i-Azam University, points to a different model entirely. "Pakistan's history suggests that empowering local governments is a better choice in terms of governance and provision of services," he said. The United States and southern India offer examples of how smaller administrative units, when given real authority and resources, can compete with one another and become more responsive to citizens.

But redrawing the map carries risks that go far beyond administrative efficiency. Creating new provinces means creating new governments, new assemblies, and new distributions of federal resources. It means reopening old disputes over water rights, taxation, and control of natural resources. Sindh's provincial assembly has already opposed the idea of creating new provinces within the province. Political groups have warned against dividing existing territories. The fear is not abstract: in a country where ethnic and regional identities remain potent, boundary changes can reopen wounds. Ismail has argued that redrawing provincial lines would be particularly risky in Sindh, where the political stakes are highest. He advocates instead for empowering existing local governments within current boundaries—a safer path that avoids the dangers of incomplete division and the resentment that could follow.

Shoaib articulated the deepest concern: even if all provinces were divided simultaneously, the division of finances, water, jobs, and special territorial privileges would require lengthy negotiations and political consensus. "In Pakistan's case, the risk of resistance and perpetual resentment is real. A partially finished division will aggravate existing ethnic tensions," he said. The debate, then, is not simply about whether Pakistan should have four provinces or fifteen. It is about whether changing the administrative map can actually bring power, resources, and accountability closer to ordinary people—and whether such a transformation can be achieved without creating new political fractures that could take decades to heal.