Covid-19 and Local Government

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While local governments are at the forefront of the current Covid-19 crisis the world over, in Pakistan these institutions are largely disengaged from its citizens. Either there is a complete absence of a local authority in most of the districts or the governance style that it follows, wherever it marginally exists, is authoritative and reactive in nature. Whatever the case may be, the essential state-society social contract is being undermined, which may lead to marginalization, group grievances, and conflict and social resistance as put by the 'Covid-19 Pakistan Socio-economic Impact Assessment and Response Plan' released by the UNDP. The report goes on further to warn about the potential perils that perhaps the virus will wreck on the people: the impacts may reach deep into society and on the behavior of individual, and affect well-being and mental health. Against this likely scenario, a weak coordination mechanism and platform at the local level is already rendering relief and emergency responses ineffective, and causing duplication and the waste of scarce resources. On the top of all this, there is a looming fear of violent extremist actors filling the state-society disconnect, as they have done in the past. 

Therefore, to avoid any such ramifications, the local government system must be overhauled and simultaneously empowered enough to reach out to the affected ones.

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