Privatization, Regulation and Competition in South Asia

It is a great honor to be invited to deliver the Mahbub Ul Haq Memorial Lecture. Mahbub finished his graduate studies in economics and left Yale in 1956, a year before I began my own graduate studies there. He had set an exemplary record that those of us from South Asia who followed him at Yale, such as Bashir Karamali, Parvez Hasan, Syed Nawab Hyder Naqvi, Syed Naseem, and myself included, could only envy. In the late seventies, I interacted with Mahbub at the World Bank, where I spent three years at the Development Research Center. I still recall our discussions at the Bank about the Basic Needs Approach to economic development. As the Special Adviser to the UNDP Administrator, he pioneered the concept of Human Development and developed the Human Development Index (HDI). We resumed our discussions, this time on the conceptual and measurement issues related to HDI. Our debates were always friendly, and even though we strongly differed on development strategies, we were united in our belief that eradication of abject poverty and enabling each individual to achieve a fuller and richer life according to his or her own lights have to be the overarching objectives of any development strategy. The world of economics, and we in South Asia, lost a beacon of light, and a source of fresh ideas and innovations, when he was snatched away from us. Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to his wife Bani, who is not only valiantly and successfully carrying on his legacy, but also contributing in her own right to furthering economic and social development of South Asia.