hahid Javed Burki inspired an entire generation of aspiring economists, thinkers and social scientists in Pakistan. Given the dearth of economists in Pakistan’s early years, the lived experiences of the few we had are an invaluable source of insights for future scholars interested in Pakistan’s economy during the ’60s and ’70s. The biographical accounts and experiences of Pakistan’s first crop of economists chart the history of Pakistan’s initial struggles with developing a set of institutions and a system of governance, mobilising resources and creating the country’s first economic policies and plans.

Mahbub ul Haq, Moin Qureshi, Shahid Hussain, Parvez Hassan and Moin Baqai were among a group of thinkers and intellectuals that departed from the Ghulam Ishaq Khan-led tradition of accountants shining in the domain of economic decision-making.

I was first introduced to Burki sahib’s work in 2015 when I was a master’s student at the University of Guelph in Canada. I had been oblivious to Burki sahib’s wisdom and his work until that time. I was writing a paper that argued that the years covered by Pakistan’s first three five-year plans were the golden period in the country’s economic history. I had looked at the data for the 15 years between 1955 and 1970 to start imagining that I would be the first person to look at that period from such a lens and to develop a taxonomy. Excited about these prospects, I began looking thorough a section of Guelph’s library that contained writings on South Asia from the ’60s. There were a number of texts that looked into Pakistan’s economy in the ’60s. These included works by the Harvard Advisory Group economists Stern and Falcon, Gustav Papanek and Griffin and Glassburner. The shelf also had entries by Pakistani planners, bureaucrats and economists including Zahid Hussain, chairman of the Planning Board in the sixties, Said Hasan, the deputy chairman of Planning Commission, Mahbub-ul Haq and MH Kazilbash, who had written a pocket-size, type-written book printed on parchment paper called Planning and Economic Controls in Pakistan (1968).

Another volume was one by Burki sahib. It threw light on the successes and failures of the Ayub era. I was both fascinated (and disappointed) to see that not only did Burki sahib regard Ayub’s era with the degree of appreciation that my reading of the period had reserved for it, he also used the phrase Golden Period, which I had so far kept very close to my chest as a product of my imagination and mental faculty. I was fascinated to have found someone I could work with in the future. My disappointment came from the fact that I no longer had the first-mover advantage in this area of research about Pakistan.

I remember mentioning this to Burki sahib many years later. He replied with an interesting anecdote about a long conversation he had had with Ayub Khan. He recalled meeting Khan at the house he had built in the foothills of Islamabad after his retirement. Ayub Khan told Burki sahib that he was familiar with the fact that in his writings he had called Ayub’s period the Golden Age of Pakistan. Referring to what Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had said after he had parted ways with him, “Zulfi doesn’t think that that was the case.” Ayub said that he hadn’t behaved or acted like a dictator. The details of the policies he adopted and the projects that his government financed were worked out by the Planning Commission. In that context, he told Burki sahib of what had transpired in the conversation with the team President Eisenhower had sent to Karachi (then capital of Pakistan) and to New Delhi to meet with him and Indian Prime Minister Nehru to ask them what they needed from Washington to realise their development ambitions.

“Pakistan didn’t have economists of the [desirable] stature and experience to advise me about policy issues. I asked the Americans for help. That led to Harvard University’s Development Advisory Staff (DAS) to send their experts to Pakistan. They arrived and joined the Planning Commission in Karachi and Planning and Development Departments in Lahore and Dhaka. Nehru asked the Americans to set up MIT-type institutions to train people in the use of technology for promoting development. I wish I had done that too. We have fallen way behind India in having experts in technology.” Burki sahib also recalled that Ayub Khan was pleased that people such as Gustav Papanek had written books that described Pakistan as a model other developing nation could follow.

Young Pakistanis must be familiarised with Barki sahib’s immense contribution. 

Little did Burki sahib know that when Shahid Najam, a remarkable leader in the development sector himself, introduced me to Burki sahib in the ides of March, 2016, at his office in Garden Town, Lahore, I was having a fan moment. I had planned my entry into his office to get an opportunity to work with him. Someone called Zaeem Yaqoob Khan, working at the Beaconhouse National University, had told me a week earlier that Burki sahib had setup an institute in Lahore with the help of folks at BNU that did an annual report on the economy. He was also kind enough to make a reference to a place established in the memory of the brilliant Mahbub-ul Haq that paved the way for my work with the BIPP.

Burki sahib interviewed me. It was a short interview in which he seemed to be interested in knowing whether I could analyse data and run numbers for a report on Pak-Afghan trade relations he was writing for the Asia Foundation. He gave his nod to my hiring. This led to years of working with him and having the pleasure to know him, his life and his contributions to Pakistan.

Burki sahib had shown signs of immense promise even in the very early days of his career. Born in 1938, he took the competitive civil service examination in 1960 to become part of the Civil Service of Pakistan, standing second that year. Early during his civil service training, Burki sahib heard back from Oxford University where he had applied at the same time when he was in the process of joining the civil service. Oxford University invited him to join as a Rhodes scholar. He came close to declining the offer to please his mother who wished her son to join the coveted service. However, on learning that one of his probationers was about to decline a Rhodes scholarship to join the service, the Civil Service Academy director general deferred Burki sahib’s civil service training to allow him to attend Oxford. Burki sahib had studied physics at Government College, Lahore, and Punjab University but took up economics at Oxford which he thought was necessary for him to learn the ropes of development – a skill he was going to practice for years to come in the civil service.

He returned to Pakistan to join the civil service and served in district management from 1963 to 1967 before moving to Lahore to become in charge of the Rural Works Programme. This was a United States-funded activity aimed at developing the Pakistani countryside. The United States was then providing generous assistance to Pakistan. His reputation in the civil service got him key positions like the chief economist of West Pakistan.

Next, Burki sahib took up a doctoral position at Harvard where he did some interesting work on the Chinese communes (that also led to a book called A Study of Chinese Communes). He was then called upon by his long-time friend and contemporary Mahbub-ul Haq to join his team at the World Bank. Reluctant at first to leave the sought-after Harvard PhD in economics halfway, Burki sahib gave into Mahbub’s insistence only to end up outliving Mahbub at the Bank. While Mahbub kept leaving positions in international development to join governments in Pakistan, Burki sahib persisted with the Bank, eventually becoming its director of China Operations and vice president for Latin America. Unlike Mahbub, Burki sahib did not accept positions in the government of Pakistan on a regular basis. However, he did accept the role of interim finance minister in 1997. While his was a brief tenure, spanning over a few months only, it turned out to be a boon for Pakistan that was facing yet another liquidity crisis.

As Burki sahib recounted, and Salman Shah, a junior minister during the time corroborated, Burki sahib was able to use the goodwill he had generated with the Chinese to bail Pakistan out. This led to offers from the Nawaz Sharif government to continue. However, he did not see this as a permanent position from the beginning.

Burki sahib retired from the bank a few years later to focus solely on writing. He divided his effort between voluntary/ pro-bono writing and commissioned work, usually for global think tanks.

In the early days of his retirement, he spent some time with the Wilson Centre where he produced a few extremely readable texts on Pakistan’s economy and its place in the world, and thereafter with the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. Between these two positions, Burki sahib, with the help of late Sartaj Aziz, set up his own think tank in Lahore. Initially situated within the Beaconhouse National University as the Institute of Public Policy, the institute became more independent of its connection to BNU and adopted Burki sahib’s name to be called the Burki Institute of Public Policy. The BIPP is one of Burki sahib’s many gifts to Pakistan.

Another gift that I am reminded of was a book I co-edited with Burki sahib in 2019. On Pakistan’s 70th birthday in 2017, Burki sahib had decided to put out an edited volume chronicling the history of the country’s politics, economics and society. The production of the volume took a little over two years following which the World Bank launched Pakistan at 70 in Islamabad in February 2020. The book did well, perhaps not as well as some other books written by Burki sahib, but it occupies a special position in my heart.

The writer, a Pakistani economist, currently lives in Boston, USA. He tweets @asadaijaz