A Better Future for Pakistan

Pakistan is the fifth most populous country in the world, with over 240 million people, yet it is governed through just four provinces. Punjab alone is home to more than 120 million people, which makes it larger than most countries on earth. A single provincial government is expected to deliver schools, hospitals, policing, and justice to a population this size, spread across areas as different as Lahore and Rajanpur. This presents an important administrative challenge, and creating new provinces could be considered as one of the reforms through which Pakistan can strengthen governance and promote balanced development.

The basic principle of good administration is that the smaller and closer a unit of government is, the more responsive it can be. In a province of 120 million, a citizen in a remote district may be hundreds of kilometres from the provincial capital, where every major decision on budgets, postings, and projects is made. Smaller provinces would bring decision-making closer to ordinary people, shorten the distance between a complaint and its resolution, and make officials easier to hold accountable.

In large provinces, development spending tends to flow toward the capital and the already prosperous regions. Areas like southern Punjab, Hazara, and interior Sindh have expressed concerns over disparities in access to schools, roads, hospitals, universities, and other development infrastructure. A new province would have its own budget, its own development priorities, and its own share under the National Finance Commission award. Regions that were once at the margins of a large province would become the center of their own, with a stake in building their own infrastructure.

Policing, courts, health care, and education all suffer when one administrative machine is stretched over too wide an area. Smaller provinces mean smaller bureaucratic chains, more manageable police and judicial structures, and administrators who can actually know the territory they run. Crime control, disaster response, and public health campaigns are all easier to manage at a scale that officials can supervise effectively.

Different regions have different economic strengths; cotton and mangoes in the south, mountain tourism and timber in the north, ports and industry along the coast. A dedicated provincial government can design policy around its own strengths, attract investment to its own cities, and compete with other provinces for business. This healthy competition is how many successful federations grow. When each region has its own capital, its own planning, and its own incentives, growth spreads beyond a few big cities into new economic hubs.

Pakistan’s federal structure faces the challenge of maintaining a balanced distribution of political and administrative representation. Punjab holds roughly half the country’s population, giving it significant representation in the National Assembly and highlighting the importance of maintaining a balanced federation. Creating additional provinces could contribute to a more balanced federation by strengthening representation and administrative capacity across different regions.

Pakistan has relatively few provincial units compared with several other large and diverse countries. India has 28 states and 8 union territories, and its states have repeatedly been reorganized to improve governance, as with Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Telangana. Nigeria has 36 states, and the United States has 50. Many large and diverse countries have found that more sub-national units are a way of strengthening unity.

Creating new provinces would require a constitutional amendment and therefore broad political consensus. A practical approach could begin with the establishment of a national commission to assess potential provincial boundaries using objective criteria such as population, geographical area, revenue potential, infrastructure, and administrative viability. The financial implications would also need careful consideration, including the development of a fair formula within the National Finance Commission (NFC) framework to ensure that the creation of new provinces does not disadvantage existing ones. A phased approach could then be adopted, beginning with regions that have the strongest administrative rationale and public support. At the same time, strong local government institutions would need to be established beneath the provincial level so that decentralisation extends beyond provincial capitals and decision-making genuinely reaches local communities.

Pakistan’s population has grown many times over since independence, but its provincial structure has barely changed. As Pakistan’s population and regional needs have expanded, there is a growing case for examining whether its existing provincial structure can continue to meet the demands of effective and responsive governance. More provinces would bring government closer to citizens, spread development more fairly, improve services, unlock regional economic potential, and create a more balanced federation. Reorganizing the map is about governing it better so that every region has a real chance to grow.