A key document in the banal processes of official paperwork, the term itself abbreviated as “NOC” enters the lexicon of Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi, and Pashto as a statement of fact, a jab, a joke, and a burden. Beyond its pervasive use in the bureaucracy, it is the cultural drumbeat of hundreds of years of thumping negation.
A free people, formulating an administrative order in their own likeness without the disease of xenophilia formed in a colonial crucible, would never conceive of a logical contradiction as the cornerstone of its administrative apparatus. The unholy lovechild of Whitehall and the Indian Civil Service has had a stultifying effect on every single effort to form a free and prosperous society.
At the heart of this devilish document – it is no exaggeration to call it the epitome of evil – is a logical and rhetorical conundrum known as “proving a negative.” Where, here, the applicant is obliged to “provide evidence that you DON’T NOT need to proceed with activity x, y, or z.”
One can imagine an Oxford educated bowler-hatted bureaucrat in Whitehall snickering in the halls at the prospect of creating this procedural iron maiden. Such a formulation is a perfect algorithm for a distant colonial administrator not beholden to the local population of a far-flung colony with long communications channels where a letter may take months to arrive, if at all.
The NOC’s in-built denial of every act of God-given freedom preserves the colonial state in sticky tar. And like the University of Queensland’s Pitch Drop Experiment, the pace of change is slowed from days to decades.
Now, in the year of our Lord 2023, the far-off colonial administrator is replaced by the incessant obstruction of the local ‘Babu’ – bureaucrat. Inheriting a particular procedure and document from an unknown source he continues to issue it unthinkingly and unquestioningly, as if it were an unalterable Platonic form plucked from the heavenly ether of the gora sahib’s –white man’s-- mind.
To the uninitiated – perhaps we ought call them “unsullied” – it would seem this is the South Asian version of a “permit.” Permits are a universally recognised procedure of submitting evidence/documents/applications for certain defined activities that have been legally mandated as requiring government permission in order to proceed.
Permits are an inconvenience, surely, as is any bureaucratic interaction, but the tediousness of it in the more civilised world would be an utter revelation in Pakistan. A mellifluous and heady cocktail of unimagined efficiency and social trust compared to the hyrda-headed “No Objection Certificate.” It behooves me, then, as a child of East and West, to build a bridge between Islamabad and Indianapolis, between Karachi and Kalamazoo, between babu and bureaucrat, between NOCs and Permits.
Firstly, under a system of permits, the reason for the existence of the permit is known and defined; also defined, in no unclear terms, is the conditions under which the permit is to be issued. Meaning -- and I ask for patience from my readers settled in self-actualised society, as this may seem self-evident -- no matter the complexity of the subject, a fishing permit or a private nuclear reactor, the completion of the documentary requirements necessitates the issuance of the permit. This is simply the existence of ‘PROCEDURE.’
My dear innocent Harrapans and Bactrians, you must be in shock! On the Indus River the completion of documentation is not the end of your long journey. Nay, it is common fact that this is merely the beginning of your Sisyphean ardour! And ardour it must be, to subject yourself to this kind of torture must be some localised dominant gene for riverine lunacy that washes away all sense of self-preservation.
The completion of the elaborated task, the known, opens a door into the unknown. The beginning now of the applicants’ pleas to the bureaucrats near limitless discretionary power. Who, after all the work is done, begins questioning your application, raising doubts about your sincerity, misunderstanding your intentions, perhaps by design or out of ignorance, until he is satisfied and perhaps not even then; till he is incentivised, and perhaps, not even then!
The infinitude of proving a negative means that at any moment new objections can be raised and work can be halted forever without any justification, or perhaps even worse, once all NOCs have been given they may be rescinded arbitrarily without any right to appeal!
What! Our tortured Pakistani entrepreneur mind is screaming into the abyss at the revelation that there exists such places in this world that citizens have rights and freedom. The freedom to get a permit issued, so mundane to our civilised friends seems an utter extravagance to us. The predictability, the mutual trust, the defined borders on power, it’s enough to bring a tear to the eye.
Secondly, after ‘PROCEDURE,’ there is explicitly defined a reason for the existence of the ‘PROCEDURE’ itself: this we can call ‘PURPOSE.’ Any reduction in a free man’s ability to act must be justified. How quaint for the colonised mind. A fishing permit to protect the fish, an EPA certificate to prevent effluent waste, safety records to avoid a meltdown at your private nuclear facility to… whatever it may be. But under Pakistan’s obtuse administrative offices NOCs are not defined within limits for an identifiable purpose, rather they are part of expansive Ministerial Satrapies. NOC’s are broadly & universally applied to the citizen --- rather “subjects” – under the purview of certain departments or ministries. Interestingly, when something is being attempted for the first time – commonly known as “innovation”—the subject has to guess “where should I go for an NOC?” heaven forbid he proceed to innovate outside the paternal jurisdiction of any particular sclerotic authority.
Thirdly, the PURPOSE of a PROCEDURE is considered complete after the provision of PROOF after which the permit is granted. Herein is the most damnable aspect of the “No Objection Certificate,” the burden of proof in the NOC is shifted from the bureaucrat to the applicant! In a permit issuing culture proffered evidence against documentary requirements are presumed to be true, confirmed as such through relevant departments that issue these documents. All doubts about the veracity of the documents and denials of permits must be justified with either counterevidence or the procedure itself – eg yearly caps on hunting permits already reached. In short, the permit issuer must work, and hard, to deny a complete application.
Here, though, the sphinx-like Pakistani bureaucrat looms stone faced across his heavy wooden desk, a vast gulf of glass and green felt between us. Having submitted form 2C-A, and notarised it from a recognized notary, and submitted it under the correct value of Stamp Paper, he now wants more, more than just complete documentation. As a loyal subject, you must also help him! Help him to truly believe that your documents are complete in his stone-heart. Alternatively, he must be motivated to believe your documents are true and acceptable through obsequious groveling, monetary catalysts, or political force; perhaps even all three!
Without:
- PROCEDURE: a legally defined process
- PURPOSE: a bounded legal justification defining the exact reason for a permit to exist
- PROOF: a requirement that puts the burden of evidence on the issuer and not the applicant
It is impossible to live in a free, prosperous or happy nation. Evidence to that effect is repeated daily and ad nauseam - and my contribution to that conversation will be as useful as another grain of wheat in the plains of Punjab.
Philosophically having seen the administrative apparatus of the United States, champion of free enterprise, the mental state of the citizenry and its bureaucrats is clear. In a permit culture: Everything is legal except that which is strictly illegal; in an NOC culture: Everything is illegal except that which is expressly legal.
A system of government that relies at its core on such a culture – NOCs instead of permits— if it were to function perfectly, and as designed ---without the “special cases” of the undue influence of money, favours or force -- would constitute a massive blow to the flourishing of the Pakistani polity. I contend that in such a system of administration these “special cases” may be the only reason anything gets done at all. The broad discretionary powers, the ill-defined documentary requirements, the foisting of the burden of proof onto the common citizen is tantamount to the criminalisation of life itself! To speak of fixing a system with such a rotten core is perhaps even more frightening than the system that currently potters along now in dysfunction.
In such a culture an entrepreneur without access to political power, sufficient money, or a talent for self-abasement has three options:
- Work within the rules and risk rejection or getting mashed into an officious sand trap.
- Work outside the rules and be forced to shut down after being found out.
- Leave the country altogether!
Is there any doubt that many have taken the third option? Finding amenable locales where ambition isn’t interred in dysfunction.
The solution is simple, dear reader: permits must be promulgated in the Pakistani polity! Rather than resurrecting and reforming an administrative corpse and calling it “reform”- rather “necromancy”. Throw the whole thing out, ban all references to the “No Objection Certificate” and excommunicate it from the body politic altogether, PERMITS from here on out. Gather all our civil servants and teach them to keep their nose out of everyone’s business and say yes to everything by reciting a new mantra: “Everything which is not expressly illegal is legal!”