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MY LIFE AND MY COUNTRY Memoirs of a Pakistani Economist Parvez Hasan 923.5 Parvez Hasan My Life and My Country: Memoirs of a Pakistani Economist / Parvez Hasan.-Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2010. 549pp. 1. Autobiography. I. Title. 2010 Published by: Niaz Ahmad Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. ISBN-10: 9 6 9 - 3 5 - 0 0 0 0 - 0 ISBN-13: 978-969-35-0000-0 Sang-e-Meel Publications 25 Shahrah-e-Pakistan (Lower Mall), Lahore-54000 PAKISTAN Phones: 37220100-37228143 Fax: 37245101 http://www.sang-e-meel.com e-mail: [email protected] PRINTED AT: HAJI HANIF & SONS PRINTERS, LAHORE. 3 My Life and MY Country Memoirs of a Pakistani Economist 4 MY LIFE AND MY COUNTRY CONTENTS 5 Contents Introduction Chapter 1 A Punjabi Childhood Chapter 2 Government College, Partition, and Pakistan’s Emergence Chapter 3 Early Years of Pakistan Chapter 4 Becoming a Professional Economist Chapter 5 Year in Washington D.C.: 1954–55 Chapter 6 State Bank of Pakistan Years: 1955–1958 Chapter7 Yale University: 1958–1960 Chapter 8 Pakistan Interlude: 1960–1961 Chapter 9 Life and Times in Saudi Arabia: 1961–1965 Chapter 10 Remembering Anwar Ali: An Unsung Pakistan Hero Chapter 11 Heydays of Planning in Pakistan: 1965-70 Chapter 12 Crumbling of Ayub Regime and General Yahya’s Takeover Chapter 13 An Unexpected Job Offer from the World Bank and Goodbye to Lahore Chapter 14 Remembering Early Washington Years and Breakup of Pakistan Chapter 15 World Bank 1970–1996 6 MY LIFE AND MY COUNTRY Chapter 16 Philippines--- The Asian Lagga Chapter 17 Economic and Social Transformation in Malaysia Chapter 18 Korean Development : Early Years Chapter 19 China Joins World Bank Chapter 20 Middle East and North Africa Chapter 21 Eastern Europe and Breakup of Soviet Union Chapter 22 Central Asia and Uzbekistan Chapter 23 Bhutto’s Failed Economic Promise: 1972–1977 Chapter 24 Ziaul Haque’s Long Rule and Even Longer Shadow : 1977–1988 Chapter 25 Wobbling Democracy 1988-99 Chapter 26 Musharraf’s Military Rule, The Rise and Fall of the Economy: 1999–2008 Chapter 27 Daring to Look at Pakistan’s Future INTRODUCTION 7 Introduction This is a story of a journey that started three-quarters of century ago in British India in the 1930s, when English rule was supreme, Indian independence was not on the horizon, Pakistan was not even a dream; the worldwide depression, low commodity prices, and the scarcity of jobs made life and future prospects for most Indians– especially Muslims, who had been left behind in education and skills– difficult and uncertain. It is the story of an individual who is old enough to remember the first real stirrings of the Pakistan movement in the early-1940s, the unbelievable speed of the political transfer of power by the British in 1947, the creation of Pakistan against very heavy odds, the violence and upheaval of the partition of the Indian subcontinent, and the social, attitudinal, and economic changes that were triggered by independence and the massive ethnic transfers across the borders of India and Pakistan. It is a personal memoir, but is deeply intertwined with the history of Pakistan, the sense of confidence of the first generation of Pakistanis who, like me, completed their education after the British left, and got their first jobs in an independent country, and the vast opportunities that opened up for them as the dominant Hindu and Sikh business and professional classes left, creating a great vacuum. It is a memoir which also recalls a public education system that remained largely intact in the early years, despite a major turnover of students and faculty after partition and produced a large and distinguished number of Pakistanis whose essential education was home-based. I attended Government College Lahore (now University) for six years, from 1946–52. Though at times, style appeared to be given more importance than substance in college life, the overall quality of education was good, thanks to some highly motivated and outstanding teachers and the high quality of the student body. I recall 8 MY LIFE AND MY COUNTRY with affection and gratitude my English teachers, Professors Ashfaque Ali Khan, Syed Mohammed Raza, Syed Manzoor Hussain, my Persian teacher, the renowned poet, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, and last but not least, my economics teacher, the eminent educationist, Professor M. Rashid who could have easily discouraged my study of economics and thus blocked the pursuit of a profession that has been a great joy of my life. It is above all the story of an economist belonging to the first generation of the profession in Pakistan. I became a professional economist totally by chance and with some initial misgivings, but had the good fortune of becoming a central bank economist at of the age of 21, an Economic Adviser to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency before I was thirty, and a part of an elite group of Pakistani planners in the heyday of planning under President Ayub Khan in my early thirties. As a member of the planning establishment in the second half of the 1960s, I witnessed or was involved in some fashion in major happenings of the time; the great resilience shown by the Pakistan economy after the 1965 war, due in part to the effectiveness of economic policies and planning and the rapid spread of the Green Revolution, Ayub’s political decline, Yahya’s breakup of West Pakistan as one unit, Bhutto’s and PPP’s rise, the widening divide between East and West Pakistan following Mujibur Rahman’s Six Points, and the growing distance between West and East Pakistan economists, which contributed to the separation of East Pakistan in 1971. My life took an unexpected and unsought turn when, almost out of the blue, I was offered an interesting job at the World Bank in April 1970. Pakistan’s political turmoil was then just beginning. The breakup of West Pakistan was dispiriting for me personally, because it essentially removed a large part of the challenge of my job. I, therefore, accepted a three-year assignment at the World Bank. Little did I know that my service at the World Bank would stretch to more than a quarter of a century, indeed till my retirement! What made my working life at the Bank fascinating was the opportunity to witness and participate in some of the great development stories of our time, the rise of East Asia, the entry of China in the global economy, and the economic turmoil and reforms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union after the collapse of INTRODUCTION 9 communism. As Chief Economist for the East Asia region for a decade (1974–84), I saw and, in some small way, assisted in what has come to be known as the East Asian Miracle, most notably the rise of Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. I was also fortunate to be a part of the process of China’s entry into the World Bank, as the head of the first and very large economic mission to that country in 1980. I was a witness to the economic backwardness and widespread poverty in China just a few decades ago and, like everyone else, have been amazed at the Chinese economic progress during the last quarter of a century. China’s progress has no parallel in economic history because not only has its pace of its economic advancement been so rapid, but also there is no precedent of a large continental economy using export-orientation as the engine of growth. While it has been exhilarating to be involved with economic success stories, it has been sad to witness economic mismanagement, often combined with inequity in countries like the Philippines, Egypt, Algeria, and the former Soviet Union. But nothing has been quite as painful as observing and analysing Pakistan’s many missed economic opportunities and miscues. Even in my World Bank years, I never lost interest or touch with developments in Pakistan, especially in the economic field. Several opportunities for advising the government during Ziaul Haq’s rule made direct involvement with key policy makers possible. Later on, I was fortunate, during the first governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, to have direct responsibility for supervising World Bank economic and policy work as Chief Economist for EMENA, the group of countries in which Pakistan was included in 1987. After retirement from the Bank in the mid-1990s, I have been able to devote most of my intellectual efforts on studying Pakistan’s multi-faceted economic problems. Spending two years in writing a history of economic policies and performance, published in May 1998 as a book entitled Pakistan’s Economy on the Crossroads: Past Policies and Present Imperatives, was a greatly satisfying personal endeavour and helped to deepen my understanding on why economic and social progress has so frequently faltered in our homeland. I cannot claim that my book had much immediate policy impact because very soon after it was published, India exploded its nuclear 10 MY LIFE AND MY COUNTRY device, Pakistan followed suit, sanctions were imposed by Western countries, and Pakistan went into a crisis management mode, as a sharp worsening of the foreign exchange situation and the freezing of foreign currency deposits shook confidence in the economy. An initiative by Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz under the Nawaz Sharif government to ask me to head a debt reduction and management committee did not pan out, as Sartaj soon moved to the Foreign office. However, a detailed paper on Pakistan’s debt problem submitted by me to the October 1999 meeting of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists, soon after he seized power, triggered fresh interest in setting up a high level debt committee under my chairmanship.

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