Rambling at the economists’ moot

These past three days I have been attending the 34^th Annual Conference of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists (PSDE) in Islamabad. December is the month of our national shame. The host institution, the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), was also affected by the events leading up to the tragedy of December 16, 1971. Its website informs that “PIDE was established at Karachi in 1957 and in 1964 accorded the status of an autonomous research organisation.” It then jumps to November 2006 when PIDE “was granted the degree awarding status”. Something cataclysmic happened between 1964 and 2006, but it has been ignored. In January 1971, some Bengali ministers met the ruling dictator General Yahya Khan and pleaded with him to shift PIDE to Dhaka. Weary of the Six Points and the rising political movement in their support, the general found it to be a low-cost measure of appeasement. In no time, PIDE moved to Dhaka, along with a world class library. With the declaration of an independent Bangladesh at the end of the same year, it became Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. The present PIDE started in three hostel rooms of what then was the University of Islamabad in January 1972. Dr S M Naseem, the economics head at the university, was asked to act as director. In a period of six months, Mr M L Qureshi was appointed as its first director. It was a new phase of reconstruction and development, without the library and institutional memory of the old PIDE.

The PIDE website also claims, “The Pakistan Development Review (PDR) is an internationally-refereed journal published regularly by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics since 1961.” As a matter of fact, no issue of the PDR was published in 1971 and 1972. In 1972-73, I used to be a visiting lecturer at the Quaid-e-Azam University. PIDE was critically short of staff. Mr M L Qureshi asked me to join PIDE. While I could not take the job, I offered to help re-start the PDR. I worked with him, on contract, to produce the first three issues of 1973. This is how the PDR resumed publication in the post-Bangladesh period.

The PSDE was established in 1982 by Professor S N H Naqvi, PIDE’s fiercely independent director. There is a background to its formation. The Pakistan Economic Association (PEA) held its first post-Bangladesh annual conference at the Quaid-e-Azam University in 1972. There were two schools of thought about electing the future leadership. One school of thought wanted Mr M L Qureshi to be the president. This would provide the PEA a stable home in PIDE and ensure continuity and regularity. The other school wanted to preserve the PEA freedom by locating it in a university. The latter school carried the day, to everyone’s regret. No PEA conference has been held since. The PSDE has admirably filled the void. Its first meeting was held in March 1984 and has overtime become the major ideas exchange between academics, policymakers and the private sector.

The distinguished lectures are dedicated to the Quaid-e-Azam, Allama Iqbal and Mahbubul Haq. While many high-calibre lectures have been delivered by eminent scholars on a variety of socioeconomic issues, there has been none on these personalities themselves. One hopes that organisers would address this gap in the future meetings of the PSDE. A debate is already taking place in the media about what the Quaid stood for and on what Iqbal really said. Again, it’s time somebody covered Mahbub’s journey from 22 families to human development.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2018.

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