October 30, 2006	Monday	Shawwal 6, 1427

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President Ghulam Ishaq Khan had his own personality. A Pathan to his fingertips, he was the most authentic Pakistani. He was deeply and fiercely patriotic. A virtuoso and a maestro in the realm of civil service, he was an ideal for fledgling civil servants to look up to. His reputation had seeped down from the hills of the North-West Frontier Province to the doabs of the Punjab, the Kachas of Sind, the rock-formations of Balochistan, and even to the silt-laden lands and tea-tillas of the then East Pakistan.

With a scintillating intellect, he was as adept in hydrodynamics as he was thoroughly proficient in development economics. Spending countless hours at desk, he would go through any administrative issue or financial matter like a hot knife through butter.

In conferences and meetings, he would defend his considered views with ruthless adroitness and argue out each and every point in cold logic, supplemented by frightening accuracy of data and statistics. His language was terse but not offensive. It was firm but not aggressive. Not only did he look a Colossus among dwarfs in meetings but he was always a Triton among minnows.

His exceptional and staggering comprehension of any subject was equalled by his impeccable honesty. He was a cautious man and, at times, justifiably inflexible and unyielding. His critics categorized him as conservative who missed many opportunities in framing progressive economic and fiscal policies.

To some of his detractors he was vieux jeu. He might have been un-idealistic, but he was pragmatic in his outlook with both of his feet firmly on the ground. He was not a reactionary. He was not a Bourbon. His scepticism did not paralyse him. He desired, and indeed, endeavoured to put the battered ship of finance on an even keel to save it from any possible disaster. He was not an orthodox traditionalist, but he had no inclination to be a mummer in the festival of ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ economists and bankers.

A connoisseur of sub-continental classical and semi-classical music, both instrumental and vocal, he rejected disharmony of social relationship, as he would reject dissonance in music. Under his hard cactus-like exterior, he carried a soft core inside him. This was reflected in discussions and notes, which were peppered with Urdu and Persian couplets, nicely spiced with Pashto proverbs, Persian sayings, Arabic saws and, at times, woven with interesting anecdotes.

From the nearest possible position, I saw an all-embracing sweep of his canvas. His personality also surfaced sparklingly on paper. He wrote dazzling notes on every conceivable subject with authority, in a language which, at once, was transparent, lucid, unambiguous and urbane.

In the early years of the One Unit, I, as a junior under-secretary of finance (the tribe of section officers had not yet been born to stalk the country), attended a couple of meetings presided over by him as secretary irrigation and development. Everyone came out bewildered and dazed. Years later, in 1966, I met him, for the first time on one-to-one basis.

He was transferred from Lahore, where he was chairman, Water and Power Development Authority, to take over as secretary finance, Government of Pakistan, in Rawalpindi. He walked into my office before calling on the finance minister, Mohammad Shoaib, with whom I was working as private secretary.

Four years thereafter, as a member of the One Unit Reorganisation Committee, which was constituted in 1970 to oversee the process of dissolution of the One Unit, Ghulam Ishaq, despite the intransigence and obduracy of some members of different sub-committees, whose job was to do the spade work, and put up their reports to the main committee for decisions, ensured that the small provinces got their due shares in the assets of West Pakistan. As Finance Secretary (designate) of the North-West Frontier Province, I attended all the meetings of the main committee and saw Ghulam Ishaq’s alacrity in resolving contentious issues and addressing tendentious views.

With determined swiftness, he got all the decisions of the main committee implemented in appropriate time, and all the four provinces were resurrected according to the schedule.

The year 1979 saw the beginning of my association with Ghulam Ishaq. By then he was the Finance Minister, and I was working as a member of the Central Board of Revenue.

The budget 1979-80, which was his first as finance minister, was one of the decisive points in the fiscal history of the country. A faltering economy, which had been on a downhill course since 1970, had to be restored to its normally functioning level.

The challenge was boldly taken up. There was no juggling of figures and no concealment of facts. He did not promise one thing and ended up doing another. Rejecting confidence tricks, shedding the national habit of misleading or self-delusion, and realising that self-reliance was not a push-button operation, he raised resources of Rs5,100 million through new taxes, so as to keep the deficit financing to the absolute minimum.

He thought that in setting public finances in order, it was his duty to face problems squarely and honestly. He knew that his correct and resolute step would evoke strong reactions from almost all quarters. And it did cause an outcry. But he did not panic.

In a meeting of a committee of academicians and economists appointed by President Zia to review the new taxation measures, Ghulam Ishaq so savagely anatomised their report that the whole thing became a non-event.

Later on we learnt that Ghulam Ishaq had earlier taken a firm line with president Zia that no member of the cabinet, which had given its stamp of approval to all the taxation measures, had come out in defence of the budget. All by himself, he was being asked to take up the gauntlet. He had threatened to resign.

When I was appointed chairman, Central Board of Revenue, the distance between him and me was shortened, but it was a healthy and respectful distance. As finance minister, he never interfered, and allowed us full freedom, but he expected to be kept informed.

Not a martinet, he, in his own amiable way, was always on the qui vive. If he was convinced that an officer had acted or taken a decision in good faith, he would invariably own that decision and back the officer stoutly.

Of course, we had our shares of arguments and disagreements, but he would never, ex cathedra, say ‘the case is closed’. He would dissect, cut and lay open all points till the issues were resolved.

Having played a straight bat with dignity and integrity, he did not have the genius for political titration. During his brilliant civil service career, he had the reputation of being steady as a rock, as tough as a nail and as watchful as a hawk. Overnight, he could not think himself of becoming as yielding as wax and as soft as butter to fit into the milieu of political larrikins.

He was a misfit stream in the valley of public life. On the political map, he was a depayse, a bird blown out of its latitude. He was not a zoon politikon. Au fond, he was a civil servant. He did not choose politics for his vocation. He strayed into it, first as chairman in the placid waters of Senate, from where he found himself drifted into the presidential vortex without a life jacket. He could not swim back to safety. He was ‘spurlos versunkt’ in the stormy sea of politics.

The years Ghulam Ishaq was in Aiwan-e-Sadr (I worked with him all along) were packed with fateful and historic events in the economic, political, administrative and social affairs of the country. Those were the years of towering expectations and dispiriting gloom. Those were also the years of economic turmoil and political tumult. There was a concern about the immediate past, and a state of uneasiness for an uncertain future. Those years saw Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif on the stage in a series of plays, produced and directed, severally and collectively by them.

And did not Ghulam Ishaq deliver his lines clearly and loudly? Did he not tell Rajiv Gandhi that Indian hegemonic designs were not acceptable to other South Asian countries? Did he not interrupt General Joseph Hoar, Commander-in-Chief, US Central Command, when he made a comment on Pakistan, by quoting a Pashto proverb, “A blind man knows his house far better than an outsider with two eyes”? And did he not spurn the offer of resumption of all US aid and friendship with the most powerful country of the world, made by Reginald Bartholomew, US under secretary of state for international security affairs, in December 1991, provided Pakistan rolled back its nuclear programme?