KARACHI: The Institute of Business Administration (IBA) is among a few public sector institutions that one feels proud of and documenting its history is akin to documenting the history of Pakistan, participants in a programme were told at the IBA City Campus, where a book on the history of the IBA was launched on Thursday at the conclusion of its 60th anniversary celebrations.

Titled Chronicling Excellence: A History of IBA, the book highlights the development and evolution of the institution over the past six decades.

“The book launch is the concluding session of IBA’s 60th anniversary celebrations. The idea was to properly document and preserve the history of the institution especially of its formative years, something which we found missing while we were preparing for the celebrations,” Dr Ishrat Hussain, the dean and director of the IBA, explained in his welcome address how the idea for the book was conceived.

Difficulties were faced in collecting the records, which were all scattered. Even the library of Karachi University fell short of our requirement, he added.

Time and cost constraints, he pointed out, were other important concerns that the IBA team faced since the book was to be out before the conclusion of the celebrations.

The book, he said, had a thematic approach and contained unbiased and accurate record of IBA’s development.

“But it’s not a final and definitive history of IBA and I hope that it would prove to be a beginning of more similar efforts,” he said.

Author Sibtain Naqvi, also an IBA alumnus, spoke of his two-year experience in gathering information that led him to interview dozens of IBA alumni and search through a huge number of files and documents.

He expressed his gratitude to all those who extended their cooperation in documenting IBA’s history and said he felt deeply honoured to pen the history of his alma mater.

“All this research was simply a labour of love,” he remarked.

Former senator and federal minister Javed Jabbar commended the author for producing ‘an excellent debut book’.

“It’s not the history of IBA. It’s a mini history of Pakistan as it features all international and regional developments when the country came into being, the infrastructure it had at that time and the situation that currently prevails,” he noted.

IBA, along with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, he said, were among the few public sector institutions that one felt proud of and whose examples were needed to be followed by other government institutions.

He appreciated IBA’s sustained growth and the fact that the institution was generating 70 per cent of funds from its own resources.

Justice Munib Akthar, the chief guest and member of the IBA board of governors, expressed his good wishes for IBA for future endeavours and said “the real asset of the institution is its people”.

Prof Syed Nomanul Haq and former IBA human resource director Ayesha Minai also spoke.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2016