Titled “Governance and Government,” the book by Chaudhry Imtiaz Ahmad, currently serving as Secretary of the Services and General Administration Department (S&GAD), was launched at the Kashmir Institute of Management (KIM) before an audience comprising senior civil servants, academics and students of public policy.
Yet the ceremony appeared less a formal unveiling and more a deliberative forum on how power is exercised — and how it ought to be restrained.
Speaking as the chief guest, AJK Minister for Kashmir Cause, Arts and Languages Nabeela Ayoub Khan framed governance not merely as an administrative function but as a moral responsibility. She observed that durable development depended upon strong institutions, rule of law and evidence-based policymaking — principles that, she noted, required constant reinforcement in evolving democracies.
Her remarks subtly echoed a broader concern: that traditional bureaucratic authority, if not tempered with transparency and participation, risked losing public trust. It was precisely this tension that the book attempted to unpack.
From “Government” to “Governance”
In his address, author Ahmad, who had earned a master’s degree in International Development Management from the UK, described governance as an expanding concept extending beyond the machinery of the state. He noted that while ‘government’ denoted formal structures of authority, ‘governance’ encompassed processes, networks and citizen engagement, determining how decisions were made and implemented.
Speakers at the event — including former Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Fayyaz Ali Abbasi, Secretary Law Dr Muhammad Idrees Abbasi, Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Implementation and Inspection Commission Hassan Ashraf, and KIM Director General Dr Muqeem-ul-Islam — described the work as an attempt to bridge academic theory with lived administrative realities.
They argued that in regions such as AJK, where governance structures operated within a unique constitutional and political framework, reform had to be context-sensitive rather than derivative.
Mr Abbasi remarked that imported models of public administration often faltered when local institutional capacities and socio-political realities were ignored.
Reforms, rights and resources
Spread across, six chapters, the book moves through global development benchmarks, rights-based governance and fiscal accountability. It revisits the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Pakistan’s trajectory under them, situating AJK within broader development conversations.
Particular attention has been paid to the compatibility of human rights and policing — a theme resonating in societies negotiating the balance between security and civil liberties. The author also examines right to information (RTI) laws as instruments of transparency and anti-corruption, arguing that disclosure regimes can reshape administrative culture when backed by political will.
Another significant focus is decentralisation. Drawing upon examples from AJK’s local governance structures, the book analyses whether devolution has meaningfully improved service delivery or merely redistributed authority without enhancing accountability.
In perhaps its most region-specific intervention, the publication reviews the allocation and utilisation of AJK’s education budget, offering policy recommendations.
Participants observed that fiscal discipline and targeted expenditure remained critical to improving public sector performance.
Filling a scholarly gap
Speakers at the event were of the view that while AJK’s political history had been widely debated, scholarly engagement with its governance architecture remained limited. In this context, they noted that hardly any publication had attempted a systematic study of administrative reforms in the territory over the past two decades.
In that sense, the book represented more than a bureaucrat’s intellectual exercise; it could mark the beginning of a more structured policy discourse within AJK’s academic and administrative circles, they said.
Since the gathering reflected a rare convergence of serving officials, retired administrators and students, it turned into an intergenerational dialogue underscoring governance as a continuum rather than a fixed model.
They described the publication as a valuable reference for civil servants, policymakers, researchers, and students committed to strengthening institutional performance in the state.
Governance as conversation
The ceremony concluded formally, but the debate it sparked lingered in the hallways of KIM. Governance was no longer discussed solely as a technical matter of files and notifications, but as a dynamic interaction between state institutions and the citizens they served.
Whether the ideas articulated in the book would translate into tangible reforms remained to be seen. Yet its emergence signalled an acknowledgment that the legitimacy of authority in AJK — as elsewhere — increasingly depended not on control, but on credibility.
Tariq Naqash
