Inaugural Address – 1985

Prof. Naqvi, Dr Sarfraz Qureshi, Ladies and Gentlemen! It is certainly a great privilege for me to inaugurate the Second Annual General Meeting of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists. Even though these days I have a ‘small’ exercise going on for the forthcoming budget, I thought it was more important that I should come here and associate myself with fellow professionals also. I am delighted to learn from Dr Qureshi that there are 400 members of this Society. It is good to know that there are so many development economists around to lend us a helping hand. I hope that this tribe will grow. We just had the great pleasure of listening to Prof. Naqvi’s Presidential Address about three categories of economists: the development policy-makers, the development economists and the defunct economists. I am sure that the Address gave you both as much pleasure and as many uncomfortable thoughts as it gave me because it made us do some soul-searching to find out which category we belonged to. I made the unpleasant discovery, as I reviewed myself, that I probably belong in part to all the three categories.