Towards the end of November last year, the NED University in Karachi organised the Akhtar Hameed Khan Conference on Social Development. Shoaib Sultan Khan was the main speaker. I was happy to spot Tasneem Siddiqui sitting in the front row. Although I had seen him after a long time, he looked as fit and proper as always. The executive committee of the Council of Social Sciences (COSS), Pakistan, of which I happen to be the president, had decided to invite him to deliver our Annual Akhter Hameed Khan Memorial Lecture in Islamabad towards the end of February this year. His name had been proposed by Shoaib Sultan Khan. He readily accepted, saying: “I hope your introduction won’t be longer than my lecture.” This was a reference to my prolegomenon on why we had chosen him.

While we were thinking of sending him a formal invite, news came from Karachi on January 29, that he had passed away. We are told that he was at his usual best even on his last day. Those who devote their lives to serving the poor leave in peace. Thinking of him took me down the memory lane. We had met first in Lahore at the Temple Road residence of Reza Ali, a pioneer in development in his own right. I also recalled the numerous conversations with the provocative Feryal Gauhar. We would also meet in Islamabad whenever he was there.

Tasneem Siddiqui belonged to the now extinct class of civil servants who thought about the poor and lived for them. Like Shoaib Sultan Khan, he was inspired by the work of Akhter Hameed Khan when he visited the Comilla Academy as a civil servant. Housing for the urban poor was not a mere slogan for him. It was a passion nurtured by interactions with Akhter Hameed Khan at the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi. Hyderabad’s Khuda ki Basti is living proof of his mastery over conceptualisation as well as actualisation of low-cost housing projects. The transition from a project to a programme took him to greater heights in putting things on the ground by making the Sindh Katchi Abadis Authority a household name for the poor and the homeless. His legacy includes Saiban, an organisation devoted to action and research for shelter.

To him, housing for the urban poor was not just a slogan. It was a passion nurtured by interactions with Akhter Hameed Khan at the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi. Hyderabad’s Khuda ki Basti is living proof of his mastery over conceptualisation as well as actualisation of low-cost housing projects.

He once lamented, “there is hardly any doubt that neither the state nor the private sector is interested in solving the housing problem of the urban poor and low-income people. This means the informal sector will continue to be the main provider of plots to them (albeit illegally), and the state will continue to regularise the katchi abadis that keep proliferating.” He went on to ask, “firstly, is this the solution to the problem, and secondly, what would be the living conditions in katchi abadis (even low-income planned areas) when the population densities increase further and the already inadequate infrastructure crumbles?”

His other lament was the lack of a national urban policy that “resulted in urbanisation that was neither planned nor regulated, and has resulted in myriad challenges like inadequate and deficient infrastructure, acute housing shortages, congestion, ecological degradation, poverty and unemployment.”

At times, Tasneem Siddiqui penned down his thoughts on broader issues of development. Ever since Bangladesh’s GDP growth surpassed that of Pakistan, there have been various explanations of how that happened. His was an innovative one. He called it a “development surprise”. In focusing on the growth story, the fact that Bangladesh achieved a high level of social development regardless, was lost in quantitative quibbles. As he put it: “its progress in social outcomes is neither a reflection of economic growth nor public expenditure-led development.” It was “instead through mobilising resources at the grassroots level: micro-financing and active support of a committed and engaged civil society and intelligentsia.” In other words, it was the result of taking the Akhter Hameed Khan-Shoaib Sultan Khan model to scale. In Pakistan, however, we confine them to pilot projects.

Rest in peace, Tasneem Siddiqui. You lived a life worth emulating.

The writer is a senior political economist and president of the Council of Social Sciences (COSS), Pakistan