The issue of renaming the NWFP is still unresolved. The torch-bearer of Pakhtun nationalism, ANP, says 25 of the 27 parties included in the Constitutional Reform committee of Parliament are supporting the name proposed by it, Pakhtunkhwa. The main opposition party, PML-N, has other ideas. To safeguard its constituency in the sizeable non-Pakhtun Hazara belt of the province, it has suggested other names like Abaseen and Khyber that seek to sidestep the ethnic question. As a compromise, Abaseen-Pakhtunkhwa and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have reportedly been floated by the PML-N and already rejected by the ANP. This is apparently holding up wide-ranging and very significant constitutional reforms around which a broad political consensus has been reached. A political observer friend suggested the name Hazara Pakhtunkhwa to break the deadlock between PML-N and ANP. It addresses the conflicting concerns and can possibly bring together the ethnic groups of the province and the parties representing their interests. However, to meaningfully decentralise power, much more than renaming a province needs to be done. While the ANP is right in pointing out that the NWFP is an unfeeling colonial tag that has no connection with the people of the province, the renaming controversy has brought to the fore certain related, and more relevant, issues that need to be addressed as well. It is true that Punjabis have Punjab, Sindhis Sindh and the Balochis Balochistan, while the Pakhtuns have been denied a province named after them for all these years. And simple logic will tell us that it is only fair that this historical mistake is corrected. Hopefully, the name suggested by my friend will capture the imagination of the leaders of the two parties and they'd agree to it or something else so that we can move on. To address the real challenges of representativeness of the system and decentralisation of power, Parliament will need to look beyond the existing provinces anyway. The current parties in Parliament are not likely to bring about such far-reaching changes, entrenched as they are in the present political structure built atop provincial elites. Their concept of decentralisation of political power ends at autonomy of the existing provinces. This essentially means no effective decentralisation, as power would shift from one centre to four, and the same faces and families that have monopolised politics in Pakistan through their provincial clout would rule the roost. Things would not stay exactly the same, of course. But decentralisation conducted within the framework of the existing provincial structure will be ineffective and a hogwash. Besides, contrary to what its proponents say, more autonomy to the provinces would intensify tensions on the basis of ethnic identities. Just one look at the four provinces and their populations is enough to understand why. No province can be termed as ethnically uniform. If there are a large number of Hindko-speaking Hazarawal people in the Pakhtun-dominated NWFP, Sindh has a large number of Urdu-speaking people. In Punjab, the sense of Seraiki identity has become more pronounced with every successive year of lopsided development. In Balochistan, other than the Baloch, there are a large number of Pakhtuns as well as Makrani and Brahvi populations. As power is transferred to the four provincial capitals carved out in the name of four ethnicities, the claim over resources by the more numerous ethnic groups is bound to take on an ethnic dimension. Other than the issue of ethnic diversity within the provincial boundaries, the provinces do not make administrative sense. Bigger than many countries in the world, these provinces are not suitable foundation for effective devolution of power. Bahawalpur might be closer to Lahore than it is to Islamabad, but it is still a few hundred miles away. Will provincial autonomy give the people living there the sense of empowerment? Will it not add fuel to the Punjabi-Seraiki divide, and add to the politics of identity that might be beneficial to the ethnic elites but is unlikely to solve the problems of the under-privileged sections of the population. Effective decentralisation of power is only possible in a framework that envisages smaller federating units. Yet any suggestion to this effect makes the established mainstream parties very uncomfortable. And it is not just the lack of imagination and understanding on their part that makes them swear by the existing provinces? These parties have all bought into the rotten politics of patronage and privilege, and depend on the well-entrenched political elites that derive their power from the same rotten structure. Any redefinition that goes beyond the existing framework threatens to upset the cart laden with these rotten apples, and that is not acceptable to the existing political leadership that would much rather deal with what it knows. That does not mean that we have to ride along though. To begin with provinces are no sacred entities. They were created by the British and went through several processes of demarcation under the Raj. In India, that shares the same colonial legacy as us, the provinces are called states now, and many of them have been divided and demarcated since 1947. It is not difficult to understand why. The British colonialists had different goals and the provinces created by them served those goals well. Administration under the colonialists essentially meant keeping the natives under control through local chieftains or feudals and exploiting the resources to add to the riches of the British throne. It is unfortunate that more than 60 years after the colonialists left, we are still continuing with a legacy that had nothing to do with benefiting the people or their empowerment. That raises a basic question about the leadership of our mainstream political parties: are they interested at all in bringing power to the citizens of Pakistan? Going by their insistence on retaining the unwieldy provinces, it is obvious that all they are interested in is the perpetuation of the monopoly of their chosen horses over power. And of course, it is just one aspect of their political orientation that betrays a complete disregard of the people in whose name they govern. The writer is a freelance columnist.