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Article

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Ishrat’s career is described in Sibtain Naqvi’s meticulously researched, well-structured biography Unravelling Gordian Knots: The Works and Worlds of Dr Ishrat Husain (2021). Dr Ishrat was perhaps too modest to write it himself. Naqvi is its surrogate parent. Ishrat’s family migrated from Agra in December 1947. His father established a legal practice in Hyderabad (Sindh), where Ishrat showed precocious promise by clearing his Matric exam at the age of 12. He graduated from Sindh University, then the University of British Columbia (Canada), after which he joined Pakistan’s Civil Service in 1964. That batch achieved a legendary reputation as an elite above an elite, occupying posts from the presidency of Pakistan downwards. In 1976, he obtained a US doctorate in economics and was recruited by the World Bank. It recognised his worth even when his government didn’t. He restructured chronic cases of national insolvency — Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and finally Nigeria — and returned to the WB headquarters, a proven ‘wunderkind’. His talents were applied to other African countries and the emergent Central Asian Republics.

Publication Source

Dawn

Publication Date

4-2024

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