I first arrived at the Pakistan Institute of Development
Economics, then simply the Institute of Development Economics, at the
beginning of October 1960. It was located on the top floor of the Old
Sindh Assembly Building on Bunder Road in Karachi. At the time the Joint
Director, the resident head of the Institute, was Irving Brecher, a
Canadian economist. The Director of the Institute was Emile Despres, the
ex-officio head of Ford Foundation’s Pakistan Project administered from
Williams College, later from Stanford University, who spent only a few
weeks each year at the Institute. The Institute had a number of foreign
research advisers funded by the Ford Foundation Project and a handful of
Pakistani staff members, very few of them at senior levels. For me the
Institute was a refuge. Since my graduation from the Dhaka University at
the end of 1959 I had been teaching in the Department of Economics. I
had also been selected for graduate studies in England starting the fall
of 1960 under an award of the newly-instituted Commonwealth Scholarship
programme. In July 1960 I was dismissed from my teaching position at the
University due to alleged undesirable political antecedents during my
student days. A few weeks later my scholarship for study abroad was also
withdrawn by the Government of Pakistan whose approval was a
prerequisite for the finalisation of the award. The prospect of
alternative employment was bleak with little private sector demand for
economics graduates at the time. I had been interviewed by Emile Despres
and his colleagues who were on a recruitment mission the previous winter
in Dhaka. The teaching appointment at the University, coming on the
heels of the interview, had preempted a possible offer from them. A few
weeks after I lost my scholarship, I received a telegram from the
Institute offering me the position of a Research Officer (later named
Staff Economist). This rescued me from what appeared to be virtual
banishment from all possibility of a meaningful career. This was the
beginning of the series of many kind acts by the Institute and its
members which over time made me accustomed to treating it as a home even
after my formal employment in it ended.
Port Moresby - Construction of residence for Research Officer, Lot 11 Ogoa Street - 5 January 1962 (copy c)
