Inaugural Address

Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi, Dr Ghaffar Chaudhry, DistinguishedGuests, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is my privilege to inaugurate the FifthAnnual General Meeting of the Pakistan Society of DevelopmentEconomists. During the past six years of its existence the Society,which I founded in 1982, has become an institution devoted to thepursuit of scientific virtuosity and academic rectitude. It has provideda powerful medium through which a serious discussion of economic anddemographic issues related to Pakistan's economy has become possible. Iam happy to know that by this time over one hundred papers, written byscholars from all over the world, have been presented in this forum. Inaddition, the Inaugural Address, the Presidential Address, theQuaid-i-Azam Lectures, and the Guest Lectures, presented in this forumeach year, provide a synoptic review of the fields of developmenteconomics and demography, and of issues relating to the economics ofeducation, health and the role of women in the development process. Thismassive intellectual output should strengthen the process of knowledgecreation by matching the theories of economic development with the'reality' in the developing countries. The resulting literature, with afocus on Pakistan, also provides rich source material and guidelines forpolicy formulation in the field of socio-economic development. I mustadd, however, that while due to the contributions of the Society we knowmuch more about the nature of the development problem, our knowledge ofhow to solve it has probably not expanded as much.