Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre

In the following piece, the Human Development Centre is pleased to honour the man whose vision, intellect and courage advanced human development thought and action – Dr. Mahbub ul Haq (22 February 1934-16 July 1998).

‘Mahbub ul Haq’s untimely death is a loss to the world ...’, wrote Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General. The president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn wrote in a letter to Mrs. Haq, ‘... probably more than anyone else, (Mahbub) provided the intellectual impetus for the Bank’s commitment to poverty reduction in the early 1970’s.’ ‘His unique contributions were trend setters for the world and focused attention on the South Asian social realities, urging all of us to look at the dark corners of our social milieus’, former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral noted. Who was Dr. Mahbub ul Haq – this exceptional person who made a difference for people?

Excelling in economics in the 1950s at some of the world’s leading centre’s of higher learning, Dr. Haq had a long and distinguished career as a policy-maker. He served in Pakistan’s planning commission and federal cabinet, as Director of the World Bank’s Policy Planning Department, and at the UN Development Programme. Over a span of four decades, he gradually realised for himself that GNP growth was not an end, but merely a means, to development.

In reference to his first book, The Strategy of Economic Planning (1963), Dr. Haq reflected, ‘Though I have written much else since then, my detractors have seldom allowed me to forget my original writings, perhaps believing that the evolution of ideas is an unforgivable sin.’ Today, due in no small part to his tireless and imaginative efforts, the quality and distribution of GNP growth have become as important among decision-makers as the quantum of growth.

During his tenure at the World Bank (1970-82), Dr. Haq is credited with making a major contribution to the Bank’s development philosophy and lending policies, steering more attention towards poverty alleviation programmes and increased allocations for small farm production, nutrition, education, water supply and other social sectors. Drawing on this reform process, Dr. Haq wrote The Poverty Curtain (1976), a seminal study that served as a precursor to the basic needs and human development approaches of the 1980s. Along with his talented team, Dr. Haq did much to transform the World Bank into a development institution that places people, instead of rigid economic indicators, at centre-stage.

Serving as Pakistan’s Minister of Finance, Planning and Commerce (1982-88), Dr. Haq is credited with significant tax reforms, deregulation of the economy, increased emphasis on human development and several initiatives for poverty alleviation. ‘Under Mahbub’s direction, the Planning Commission became once again a lively place and began to exert powerful influence on social sector issues, including education and family planning, much neglected in earlier Zia years as Finance Minister, Mahbub piloted a major acceleration in social spending’, reflects Parvez Hasan.

In 1989, Dr. Haq and his wife and intellectual partner, Mrs. Khadija Haq, moved to New York, where he served as Special Adviser to the UNDP Administrator until 1995. It was at this time that Dr. Haq gathered many friends (Paul Streeten, Frances Stewart, Amartya Sen, Richard Jolly and Meghnad Desai) to prepare annual Human Development Reports, for which he would serve as chief architect. While each report monitored the progress of humanity particularly through the country rankings in a new Human Development Index each also took up a new policy issue and explored it in depth.

The impact of the Human Development Report on the global policy dialogue far exceeded expectations. More than 100,000 copies of the report now circulate in 14 languages. According to Amartya Sen, ‘(Dr. Haq’s) work has brought a major change in the understanding and statistical accounting of the process of development. ... (The series of reports), initiated by Dr. Haq in the 1990s, has had a profound effect on the way policy-makers, public servants and the news media view social and economic advancement.’

Human Development - the process of enlarging people’s choices in all fields of human endeavor is at the forefront of today’s development debate, with national human development strategies being produced in over 100 countries. Dr. Haq’s pioneering work has greatly influenced the global search for new development paradigms and has helped launch many new policy proposals, such as the 20:20 global compact and the setting up of a UN Economic Security Council.

In 1995, Dr. Haq acknowledged the sad reality that the real challenge of human development lay back home, in Pakistan and in South Asia. Along with Mrs. Haq, he established in Islamabad the Human Development Centre, a policy research institute committed to organizing professional research, policy studies and seminars in the area of human development, with a special focus on the South Asia region.

Dr. Haq believed that South Asia could become the next economic frontier of Asia if acute differences were settled and a free flow of rich customs, commerce, and ideas encouraged. In what were to be his final weeks, Dr. Haq conveyed an eagerness to define, along with his friends, a robust vision and concrete plan of action for greater unity among South Asians in the next century. Many of the HDC projects that seek to carry forth this mission are summarized in this newsletter.

Dr. Haq’s rare combination of courage, creativity, analytical depth and political acumen armed him with the tools to significantly shape contemporary development discourse and policy among practitioners, academics and civil society. He was also a warm and compassionate person, whose firm convictions in the ‘goodness of people’ drove his relentless passion to involve the common person in actions to improve their life chances. Dr. Haq will be deeply missed by his wife, children Farhan and Toneema, and the many whose hearts he touched throughout his rich life.

At one of his final HDC meetings, a lunch honouring some colleagues, Dr. Haq bade them farewell with one of his favorite quotations from Bernard Shaw: ‘You see things that are, and ask why? / I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?’ This in many ways encapsulated his quest for people-centered development and a just world order. Through his life work, Dr. Haq’s hope for a new human age, guided by a new vision of human progress, will endure.