Looking Back: How Pakistan Became an Asian Tiger by 2050

by Nadeem Ul Haque

By 2050, Pakistan had achieved a miracle. It had transformed itself from a poverty-ridden, malnourished, corrupt and aid dependent country in 2015 to qualifying for High Income category by the World Bank and the top decile in both the Competitiveness index and Social Progress Index by 2050. Where once travel advisories warned people from visiting, it is now key destination for foreign investors, students, research and even tourism. Once a basket case seeking aid, now it has a large sovereign wealth fund. Once homeland of hordes on unemployed youth and an exporter of cheap labor today Pakistan is a center of higher learning, research and the 7th largest patent recipient in the world.

How did this transformation take place? Was it good policy or good luck? Was this process driven by external aid or domestic pressures What can we learn from this experience?

Eminent economist Nadeem Ul Haque creates a fictitious narrative in this book to comment on the practice of public policy in Pakistan and how it can shape future change.

223 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 16, 2017

Reviews

[Zaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haque brilliantly puts his case for the economic development of Pakistan is a fictional way. He's sitting in 2050 and reviewing all the changes that Pakistan adopted in order to become an Asian Tiger.
He focuses on Networks that are formed by local people. The main focus of these networks is to give a policy according to local needs and not to important any policy from foreign countries as it was happening before 2020. All the policies are reviewed by the parliament. Decentralisation is a new norm. Executive heads i.e. PM or CM don't control everything and powers are devolved to the local governments. Post colonial bureaucratic structure is also reformed and it no longer controls agriculture and industry for its own benefits. Instead of cantonments, small military bases are formed. Similarly, education, heath and other sectors are also reformed by adopting policies that target markets instead of individual sectors.
This book is thought provoking, indeed.

[Shahrukh Wani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr Nadeem Haque’s book “Looking Back: How Pakistan Became an Asian Tiger by 2050” is set in hindsight of how Pakistan went from “poorly managed, conflict-ridden country, with poor development indicators,” to “a shining example of one of this century’s best reform efforts which is firmly established among the ranks of upper middle-income countries.”

The book is unique among the development literature as it lies somewhere between a luring fiction and hard hitting policy analysis. A marriage of convenience between the two methods. The book begins with a letter from the U.N. Secretary General who introduces the reader to the findings of Pakistan Transformation Commission, set up by the U.N. in 2050 to investigate Pakistan’s economic success, and goes on to explain in detail the findings of the commission.

It's truly an interesting way to discuss policy analysis. Critical of Islamabad's aid sector and its consultants, Nadeem talks extensively about the policy initiatives Pakistan needs to become an "Asian Tiger", it makes for an interesting read for policy makers or those simply interested in policy.

[Nehal Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although there is no denying that Nadeem Ul Haque has had an illustrious career as an economist and as an economic policymaker, his skill as a fiction writer may be questionable. The general outline of the book and the ideas it places definitely have a resonating feel to them; they seem like legitimate solutions to Pakistan's economic woes, but, the way they have been presented in the form of a fictional story do not do them justice.

Regardless, as a Pakistani, I would recommend this book for the ideas it presents to transforming and basically revolutionizing a struggling economy.