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Democratizing Development in South Asia:
Responding
to the Challenge of Globalization
By
Professor Rehman Sobhan
Introduction:
The Legacy of Akhter Hameed Khan
Akhter
Hameed Khan was an inspiration to my generation. I had the
privilege of learning from him when I was a young teacher
of economics at Dhaka University in the early 1960s. His
model of rural development was then making its impact in
Comilla Thana and its headquarters in the Abhoy Ashram in
Comilla had already became a place of pilgrimage for those
at home and from abroad seeking inspiration for resolving
the problems of poverty in an increasingly unequal society.
What lent credibility to Akhter Hameed sabib’s endeavours
was his own human personality and willingness to realign
his career choices to conform to his beliefs. The simplicity
of his manner, the austerity of his life style, the wry,
self-deprecating humour with which he dealt with people
of all classes, age groups and background served as a testament
to his commitment and integrity as a human being.
The Comilla model was essentially
targeted to the small or subsistence farmer who survived
in an unequal relationship with the surplus farmer and therefore
needed to be brought together in a cooperative framework
to help themselves through access to credit and irrigation.
This model did not accommodate the landless who constitute
the ranks of the poorest segment of the population. For
these groups he designed the rural works programme offering
state funded employment in the dry season. The Comilla model
had its limitations because of the scope for capture of
the rural cooperatives by the elite which subsequently compromised
its replicability across the country. But few questioned
the sincerity of Akhter Hameed’s intentions or the
value of his immediate efforts in Comilla. The ultimate
tribute to Akhter Hameed’s contribution to changing
the lives of the less privileged are to be found in the
role models he inspired. In Bangladesh people such as Mohammed
Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and our most recent Nobel
Laureate, targeted the landless groups as the principal
beneficiary of collateral free micro-credit. In Pakistan,
Shoaib Sultan Khan used the Aga Khan Rural Support Project
(AKRSP), to demonstrate that the dispossessed can indeed
help themselves through collective action. Both the Grameen
as well as AKRSP model built on the Akhter Hameed Khan tradition
that the less privileged can help themselves if they aggregate
their efforts and minimal resources are made available to
them.
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