Open AccessReminiscing the PIDE (Honouring Prof. A. R. Khan)
Author(s) -
A Ramezan Khani
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
pakistan development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.154
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 0030-9729
DOI - 10.30541/v49i4ipp.365-372
Subject(s) - scholarship , graduation (instrument) , commonwealth , political science , government (linguistics) , management , library science , schools of economic thought , sociology , law , engineering , economics , neoclassical economics , computer science , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy
I first arrived at the Pakistan Institute of DevelopmentEconomics, then simply the Institute of Development Economics, at thebeginning of October 1960. It was located on the top floor of the OldSindh Assembly Building on Bunder Road in Karachi. At the time the JointDirector, the resident head of the Institute, was Irving Brecher, aCanadian economist. The Director of the Institute was Emile Despres, theex-officio head of Ford Foundation’s Pakistan Project administered fromWilliams College, later from Stanford University, who spent only a fewweeks each year at the Institute. The Institute had a number of foreignresearch advisers funded by the Ford Foundation Project and a handful ofPakistani staff members, very few of them at senior levels. For me theInstitute was a refuge. Since my graduation from the Dhaka University atthe end of 1959 I had been teaching in the Department of Economics. Ihad also been selected for graduate studies in England starting the fallof 1960 under an award of the newly-instituted Commonwealth Scholarshipprogramme. In July 1960 I was dismissed from my teaching position at theUniversity due to alleged undesirable political antecedents during mystudent days. A few weeks later my scholarship for study abroad was alsowithdrawn by the Government of Pakistan whose approval was aprerequisite for the finalisation of the award. The prospect ofalternative employment was bleak with little private sector demand foreconomics graduates at the time. I had been interviewed by Emile Despresand his colleagues who were on a recruitment mission the previous winterin Dhaka. The teaching appointment at the University, coming on theheels of the interview, had preempted a possible offer from them. A fewweeks after I lost my scholarship, I received a telegram from theInstitute offering me the position of a Research Officer (later namedStaff Economist). This rescued me from what appeared to be virtualbanishment from all possibility of a meaningful career. This was thebeginning of the series of many kind acts by the Institute and itsmembers which over time made me accustomed to treating it as a home evenafter my formal employment in it ended.