Every year, I attend the annual Dr Akhter Hameed Khan Memorial Lecture in Islamabad which is always inspiring with keynote speakers from around the world who talk about the legacy left behind by the foremost development guru of this region.

This year the lecture was even more special because a book that I edited for the Dr Akther Hameed Khan Resource Centre (AKHRC) was launched at the event held in the large auditorium behind Faisal Mosque. The idea behind the book was to compile some of the articles, lectures and essays written about him, including some of his own memoirs of Bengal and his analysis of the development work he undertook in Comilla in the 1950s. We wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible, for it is important that the younger generation reads about the thoughts and achievements of this remarkable man.

Islands of Hope, Recollections of Dr Akhter Hameed Khan is a humble attempt to celebrate the life and work of one of the most visionary individuals this country has produced. Dr Akhter Hameed Khan passed away in 1999, but his work lives on in the people he inspired and taught and the communities he organised and developed.

Fayyaz Baqir, Director, AHKRC, gave me a free hand to edit this collection of writings on Dr Akhter Hameed Khan, for which I am grateful. The book was published by Vanguard and is available at all the leading bookstores — we have certainly tried to make it readable with lots of pictures and personal vignettes. Economist, Dr Pervez Tahir (who has contributed a chapter in the book) and writer Raza Rumi introduced the book to a packed auditorium before officially launching it. Earlier, the keynote speaker Dr Mahmood Hasan Khan of Simon Fraser University in Canada spoke about Dr Akhter Hameed Khan’s life and work.

All his life, Dr Akhter Hameed Khan worked selflessly for poverty alleviation. Not many people are aware that aside from setting up the successful Comilla Project (in present day Bangladesh) and the world-renowned Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, it was his philosophy and experience that formed the basis of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme established in the mountainous areas of Pakistan. Dr Akhter Hameed Khan served as an advisor to the Programme for many years, and today the AKRSP has transformed Gilgit-Baltistan. Its work is currently being replicated in the Rural Support Programmes Network throughout Pakistan.

Under Dr Akhter Hameed Khan’s active guidance, the OPP over the years served as a training centre for development activists from all over Pakistan. Till the end, Dr Akhter Hameed Khan was willing to teach just about anyone who wanted to work sincerely to uplift his/her community. He initiated thinking about small-scale community organisations and was an advocate of the concept that development takes its own route and moves at its own pace.

His prescription for Pakistan was simple — we need more idealists in this country. As he put it, “Where you have idealists, you have God’s blessings. Where you have good intentions, you have God’s blessings. And when you work for others and have good intentions, progress is inevitable.” Dr Akhter Hameed Khan pointed out that what this country really needed was not false promises by politicians and grandiose schemes to kick-start the economy but sheer sacrifice and hard work.

People, he said, have to learn to help themselves — the government cannot provide housing, sanitation, health, primary education and employment to everyone. A welfare state is not possible in this country.

Despite having seen this country decline from the 1960s onwards, Dr Akhter Hameed Khan was still hopeful that progress was within our reach. “If you want this country to progress you have to follow examples like Germany and Japan (after World War II). We are still in better shape because our country is not devastated… How does a community progress? It is taken forward by idealists who want to serve others and lead the way…”

Dr Akhter Hameed Khan’s rewards for more than half a century of selflessly serving others in this country has been of the more lasting, spiritual kind. In his own words, “I have been given the reward of serenity”. May the “islands of hope” that he helped create continue to grow and one day, cover the entire country as he so envisioned.