LONDON–When Mahbub ul Haq died in New York last week the traffic did not stop, nor did the United Nations, for which he had done so much, lower its flag. But all over the world, people who have been touched by the special wisdom of this astonishing man, felt their hearts miss a beat. He left behind one of the few great ideas of the twentieth century. When he died he was preparing to join Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, in San Francisco in a private seminar with some of the world’s most influential minds.
Simply put, Dr Haq was the greatest living expert on measuring human progress. Formerly Pakistan s minister of finance, for seven years he was the creator and continuing intellectual force behind The Human Development Report , published annually by the United Nations Development Program.
In his years in ministerial office he became convinced that amid the jargon of modern government, finance and accounting we lose sight of the main direction we are going in. (What better example than today’s Asian crisis.) Too often we attempt to measure progress by statistical aggregates and technical prowess. We overlook that the main goal of life is to insure survival and, beyond that, to enable the pursuit of well-being, achievement and as the American constitution (not without a great debate at the time) so aptly puts it, the pursuit of happiness . (The opposition wanted the pursuit of wealth .)
This debate reaches back at least to the time of Aristotle. Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else , he wrote. Even the nineteenth century philosophers of political economy never were gross national product absolutists after the fashion of today. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, from very different perspectives, all saw the creation of wealth as only one part of a complicated organic whole.
Haq was convinced that the contemporary obsession with increased income per head blinded both observers and participants to the tremendous advances that could be made in social well-being, even in quite poor countries, with only a modest rise in incomes. He produced sophisticated tables in which countries were not ranked by income per head but on yardsticks which he considered more revealing longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. In these tables Japan came out on top, followed by Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden. Later, he factored in the status of women and produced an even more accurate profile of well-being Sweden and Norway came out on top with Denmark not far behind , and Japan fell to 17th place.
Then he did the same exercise for Third World countries. Barbados came out first, followed by Hong Kong, Cyprus, Uruguay, Singapore, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Malaysia and South Korea. They, quite poor until relatively recently, had dramatically lowered infant mortality rates that used to be at present day African rates and insured life spans, only a generation ago 50 years or less, that today are up on the levels of the richest countries.
Haq’s two favorites were Malaysia and South Korea. Malaysia, instead of being traumatized by the race riots of 1969, used the bitter experience to formulate a 20 year plan to raise growth and human development, reduce poverty and racial discrimination and improve education and health standards.
South Korea, likewise, surged from rags to well-being in a single generation. In 1945 only 13% of adults had any formal schooling. By 1950 the average years of schooling for all reached 9.9 years, higher than for the industrialised countries.
The challenge, argued Dr Haq, which these countries met, is to combine high levels of human development, low unemployment and rapid economic growth, creating a virtuous circle in which productivity rises and triggers an increase in real wages which, in turn, attracts more investment in human capital, in education, and in access to social services.
Not surprisingly, Dr Haq was a strong critic of the tactics of the International Monetary Fund during the current Asian crisis. The IMF has effectively downplayed many of these Asian accomplishments while playing up the weaknesses of crony capitalism , unregulated banks and nepotism, even though, if it chose, the IMF could easily fault France, Italy, Spain or Brazil on such scores. At the same time the IMF has ignored that most of these Asian crisis countries have budget surpluses, high savings rates and low inflation. Why press them, Haq asked, to so dramatically raise their interest rates and cut so sharply government spending?
Dr Haq was an ascerbic but always witty critic. Not least, were his sharp words for the arms race between Pakistan and India and the lack of flexibility shown by both countries over disputed Kashmir. To the anger of many of his friends at home he suggested a clever and thoughtful interim arrangement for Kashmir that would, he argued, diffuse most of the tension.
Dr Haq was also a poet, and a translator of Urdu poetry into English. He was a doting father, a loving and loyal partner to his wife and, for many, including myself, one of life’s few great inspirers.
Above all he taught that the essential purpose of life is not to manufacture a further abundance of artifacts, but to ensure long, healthy, creative and fulfilled lives. To quote a poet he admired, Robert Burns, Man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what is heaven for?
