June 23, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 18, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 22: Speakers on Saturday evening paid glowing tributes to Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan - poet, philosopher and social scientist for pioneering social mobilisation through micro-credit and rural training initiatives in Pakistan and inspiring many other poor regions of the world.

The event was the annual lecture series, a tribute to Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan, the pioneer of participatory development in developing societies.

“Pakistan’s development will not come from the top, it will come from the bottom, and it will happen in pockets, one island formed here, one there and other will be made by you,” believed Dr Khan.

His teachings live on in the people he inspired and taught and his work continues to inspire many. This year’s annual lecture was hosted by the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP)’s Institute of Rural Management and the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN) at the National Library and was attended by over 400 people from development agencies, donor organisations, foreign missions, NGOs and civil society.

Keynote speaker on the occasion was Kopula Raju, an Indian civil servant, dedicated to the empowerment of the poor in India. In the past 12 years, Mr Raju has quietly led a transformation of the 8 million rural poor in Andra Pradesh.

Kopula Raju, who is principal secretary of government of Andra Pradesh, said Dr Khan had deeply influenced the development discourse not only in Pakistan but in several others countries including India.

“His work of finding long-term solutions to complex socio- economic problems afflicting the poor is truly inspiring,” Mr Raju said.

He said the biggest contribution that Dr Khan made to society was to correct “our distorted perception of the poor”. Dr Khan taught us, through his lifelong work, that poverty arises not out of lack of money, but out of constant disempowerment.

What the poor needed was empowerment in the form of technical knowledge, maybe some catalytic financial support, but most of all the institutions that give them the right to decide on all issues that affect their lives.

The Indian civil servant said the principles that guided the Comilla project in the rural areas or the Orangi project in urban settings were about the “enabling environment, empowering systems and self-help initiatives”.

He said the poor of Andra Pradesh who have now formed self-managed and self-reliant organisations covering 8.8 million poor women owed to Dr Khan for showing the world the intrinsic potential of the poor that lay buried deep under the prejudices and insensitivities of the governing elite.

The Andra Pradesh model of empowering the poor was now being replicated in other states of India and also attracting attention of development administrators in Africa and other South Asian nations.

“This was a tribute to the great legacy of Dr Akhter Hameed Khan,” he observed.

In his welcome address, Shoaib Sultan, chairman RSPN, who was a student of Dr Akhter Hameed Khan, stated that the Rural Support network was the result of Dr Khan’s vision. He gave a brief history of how the network evolved in the 1990s and then successive governments gave their help to set up the provincial networks including the Sarhad RSP, Sindh RSP and Punjab RSP.

He said the previous government at the behest of the Finance Ministry led by Shaukat Aziz and Hina Rabbani Khar took a quantum leap and approved $75million for social mobilisation.