KARACHI: A book titled Permanent revolution –– management for deliverable democracy written by the late Syed Mumtaz Saeed was launched at the Arts Council on Wednesday.

The first speaker of the evening, Haris Gazdar, shed light on the inherent themes in the book and raised a few questions. He said there were several reasons for acknowledging the worth of the book, the first of which was that it’s written with uncompromising partisanship towards democracy. For the author, democracy was one of the goals of development; it’s an end in itself, not the means; it’s a total design of society. He said the book had gleaned insights from different genres discussing how management theories could be brought into politics.

Mr Gazdar then asked a few questions that he said he would have liked to put to the author. The queries were: what if in the scheme of things we introduced the concepts of conflicts? What blocks reforms? Why does dictatorship always fail in Pakistan and yet there’s a constituency for dictatorship in the intellectual elite? Why do the management elite have a hostile attitude towards democracy?

The second speaker, Shamim Ahmad, spoke about Mumtaz Saeed as a friend. He pointed out two qualities in him: generosity and humility. Referring to the former, he said he accepted the weaknesses of the people around him, and alluding to the latter mentioned that despite being an accomplished writer he never boasted about it. Another aspect of the author’s life that he touched upon was the fact that he was a quality Urdu poet and quoted an entire ghazal written by Mr Saeed.

Highlighting the salient features of the book, Mr Ahmed said it had a great deal of information on the problems of management, showing the symbiotic relationship between management skills and democracy.

Safwanullah said he had known Mr Saeed since 1954 when the writer lived in PIB Colony. He said it was important to know his family background to understand his analytical mind (as the author was related to former editor of Jang Syed Mohammad Taqqi and poet Raees Imrohvi). On the book he said people needed to ask why multimillionaires always felt the pain to serve the masses. He said there’s no concept of a ruler in democracy.

Dean and director of the IBA Dr Ishrat Hussain first recalled Mr Saeed’s services when he worked alongside him at the State Bank of Pakistan and stated that he was part of the team that brought about changes in the SBP management. He said Mr Saeed also showed him the manuscript of Permanent revolution and was magnanimous enough to take his (Hussain’s) advice on making some changes to it.

Then Dr Hussain put forward some submissions related to the topic of deliverable democracy. He said devolution of administrative, legal and financial powers from provincial to district (union council) levels was important. He gave the examples of Naimutullah Khan and Mustufa Kamal, who despite belonging to two different parties worked well for the city. Next he said civil service had lost its vitality and integrity; it needed to be stronger.

Electoral, judicial and parliamentary reforms were also important, he said, as were the reforms in political parties. He emphasised the right to information and improvement in management practices.

Zafar Masud, who became a little emotional reminiscing about Mr Saeed, gave the vote of thanks.

Kazim Raza, the son of the author, ably conducted the event. In his introductory remarks he argued that better management could lead to deliverable democracy.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2015

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