Professor Rehman Sobhan Professor Rehman Sobhan, our most revered teacher and a famous social scientist of South Asia, turns 83 today. He was born in Calcutta on March 12, 1935. On this auspicious day, we shower our warm greetings to Professor Rehman Sobhan.
He, along with other economists, in the 1960s, contributed to the drafting of the Six-point Programme that became the basis for the struggle for autonomy in the then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. He was then a young teacher of Economics at the University of Dhaka exposing the inequitable and exploitative nature of the political economy of the state called Pakistan.
Rehman Sobhan brought out an argumentative magazine called Forum that ruffled intellectual minds of both the wings of Pakistan.
The story runs that the Pakistan Observer once carried a report on its front page in which President Ayub Khan was quoted as saying Pakistan had 'one economy', and Rehman Sobhan saying Pakistan had 'two economies'. Rehman Sobhan recalls: "Now what was ridiculous about that was the fact that Ayub Khan was then the President of Pakistan during Martial Law and I was a 26-year-old Senior Lecturer at the University of Dhaka. Later that year, in Lahore, I made a presentation on the two economies of Pakistan-this time through a full-fledged paper which again made headlines in the Pakistan Observer."
Rehman Sobhan's contribution to the cause of liberation struggle is a part of history. Taking many known and unknown risks, he crossed the border to join the liberation war and served as a roving ambassador for Bangladesh to lobby in the United States and other countries. After independence, he joined the Planning Commission as a Member and deeply engaged himself in the formulation of the First Five Year Plan of Bangladesh. As an adviser to the caretaker government under Justice Shahabuddin, he prepared a Task Force Report on the economy of Bangladesh on which the upcoming government could readily draw upon.
A critic of economic policies along the lines of Marxist tradition, Rehman Sobhan reckons that unless the structural causes of inequality are taken into due consideration - that seem to be hardly happening - "neither targeting of development resources to the resource poor, nor the extension of social protection are likely to resolve the problem of inequality in South Asia… The poor are embedded in certain inherited structural arrangements…. which reinforce each other to effectively exclude the poor from participating in the benefits of development or the opportunity provided by more open markets". Some of his special traits need mention. He has an ever-smiling face even when filled with anger and faced with arch critics; he is ever agile and active. His love for this country and people knows no bound.
Rehman Sobhan is a truly democratic soul devoted to dialogues. After retirement from the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), he set up a think-tank named the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) to pursue an argumentative approach to socioeconomic and political development of the country. "….I wanted to create a forum in which people of diverse backgrounds and political views would sit together and develop a culture of having intelligent and civilised arguments…"
A tireless campaigner for social justice, Rehman Sobhan has called upon all to wake up before society is pulverised by a revolution triggered by acute inequality.
Abdul Bayes is a former Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
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