The question of whether Pakistan should have new provinces has returned to national discussion, where it is being examined with the seriousness it receives approximately every fourteen years.

A dialogue convened this month in Islamabad was titled with a question mark. Participants agreed the matter required careful study, broad consensus, and strict constitutional procedure, and recommended the formation of a national commission.

The Bureau of Cartographic Indecision, which tracks proposed administrative subdivisions worldwide, reports that this is the most consistently reproduced finding in the field.

“Every body convened to consider new provinces has concluded that a body should be convened to consider new provinces,” said Bureau director Dr. Halvard Meek. “It is the only finding that has ever achieved consensus.”

There is, he noted, wide agreement that consensus is essential. That agreement constitutes the entire consensus.

Projected savings have been quoted in the hundreds of billions of rupees a year. Bureau analysts observe that the figure has been calculated to the rupee for an administrative unit possessing no name, no boundary, and no capital.

“The arithmetic is impeccable,” Meek said. “It is simply arithmetic about a place.”

Bureau research indicates the most durable feature of any proposed province is its name, which attracts the longest disputes and the least agreement. Four candidate names for a single hypothetical unit have been under discussion since the 1990s. Two of them are the same word, spelled differently.

There is also broad agreement that power should be devolved to the grassroots, and broad disagreement about which grass.

Assemblies have meanwhile taken positions. Some have demanded that the debate proceed. Others have asked that it stop. Both have cited procedure, which is long enough to accommodate them.

At the technical level, work continues. The Bureau maintains contact with a cartographer who has been asked to prepare draft maps of the same region on nine separate occasions and has, each time, delivered promptly.

“They have stopped labelling anything,” Meek said. “They draw the line. They leave the label blank. They have learned.”

Any new unit would require a capital, a secretariat, and approximately fourteen thousand items of stationery bearing a name that has not been selected. Costings have been prepared for all four names.

The recommendation will be presented to the commission, once one has been formed.

“Everything is in hand,” said Perpetua Ansari-Vale, secretary of a body that does not yet exist. “We simply need a room.”