DEVELOPMENT: Author of UN Human Development Report Dies

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 1998 (IPS) - Mahbub ul Haq, one of the world’s innovative thinkers on sustainable economic development, died Thursday in a New York hospital. He was 64.

Architect and author of the Human Development Report, published annually by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), Haq was admitted to hospital last week suffering from pneumonia.

The internationally renowned economist, described as the “guru of human development,” revolutionised development thinking by advocating that the real purpose of development is to enlarge people’s choices.

“If economic growth fails to translate into people’s lives, it loses its basic rationale,” he argued. It was necessary to weave development around people, not people around development, he contended.

In 1990, Haq introduced the Human Development Index, described as a more realistic statistical measure of socio-economic progress than gross national product (GNP) per head. The Index, now widely used to measure the progress of nations, had three basic indicators of human well-being – life expectancy, adult literacy and basic purchasing power.

Haq, who strongly advocated sharp cuts in Third World military spending, argued that the world can never be at peace unless people have security in their daily lives. The search for security, he said, lies in development, not in arms.

Between 1970-1982, Haq served as Director of the Policy Planning Department of the World Bank in Washington DC. As chief economic adviser to then World Bank President Robert McNamara, he pressed for more attention to a direct attack on poverty and for more investment in small farm production and in human development.

From 1982 to 1988, Haq played a central role as a policy maker in the government of Pakistan, serving variously as Minister for Finance, Planning and Commerce. As a cabinet minister, he pushed for economic deregulation and privatisation, a more export- oriented industrialisation and greater focus on poverty alleviation in Pakistan.

In 1989 Haq returned to the United States and was appointed Special Adviser to the UNDP Administrator. In his new capacity, he launched the annual Human Development Report which was considered a new landmark in development policy dialogue.

“Mahbub ul Haq is the closest thing to a visionary that the U.N. possesses,” the London-based New Internationalist said after his appointment. “Cutting through bureaucracy and conservatism of the UNDP, he has launched the Human Development Report, which criticises both governments and agencies like the World Bank for their neglect of the key elements of human well-being – health, education and a decent living wage.”

An author of several books on development issues, Haq returned to Pakistan three years ago where he established his own Human Development Centre in Islamabad.

His main publications include Strategy of Economic Planning (Oxford Press, 1966), The Poverty Curtain (Columbia University, 1976), First Things First (World Bank, 1982), Sustainable Development: From Concept to Action (U.N. Conference on Economic Development, 1992) and Reflections on Human Development (Oxford Press, 1995).

Haq received his undergraduate education at the Punjab University in Pakistan and at King’s College, Cambridge. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University and did post- doctoral work at Harvard University in the United States. He is survived by his wife, Khadija, a son and a daughter