Shahid Javed Burki

Shahid Javed Burki (Urdu: شاہد جاوید برکی) is a professional economist who has served as a Vice President of the World Bank and as de facto Finance Minister of Pakistan on a caretaker basis. He has written extensively on economic development and on the political history of Pakistan.

 

Early life and education

 

Born in Simla in (then-British) India on September 14, 1938, Burki migrated as a child along with his family to Pakistan at the time of the Partition of India in September 1947. They settled in Rawalpindi, where his father worked as an official in the Pakistan army headquarters. Burki is a cousin of the cricketer Javed Burki. Burki was educated at Rawalpindi’s Presentation Convent and St Mary’s Academy. Upon graduation he moved to Lahore to study double majors in Physics and Mathematics at Government College University, Lahore. He received his M.Sc. in Physics from the Punjab University in 1959. The following year he was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar from Pakistan and went to Christ Church, Oxford to study economics. He received his M.A. from Oxford in 1963 and then went to Harvard University as a Mason Fellow for graduate studies in Economics and Public Administration. He is an American citizen.^[1]

  Career at World Bank

Burki joined the World Bank in 1974 as a Senior Economist and went on to serve in several senior positions. He was the (first) Director of the China Department (1987–1994), making him responsible for managing the World Bank’s dialogue with the Chinese authorities and supervising all of the Bank’s analytical and lending work in China. He persuaded the World Bank’s senior management, in the immediate aftermath of the Chinese authorities’ repression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, that the Bank should stay actively engaged with China—a stance challenged at the time by many of the Bank’s most powerful shareholder countries. He served as the Regional Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean during 1994–1999. He took a leave of absence from the World Bank to serve in a caretaker role as Pakistan’s de facto Finance Minister for 67 days in 1996-1997 (exercising the responsibilities of the Finance Minister without assuming the title). He retired from the World Bank in 1999.

  Publications

Burki is the author or editor of several books on China (A Study of Chinese Communes, 1969, Harvard University Press), Pakistan (Pakistan Under Bhutto, 1980, Macmillan; Pakistan under the Military: Eleven Years of Zia Ul-Haq (with Craig Baxter), 1991, Westview Press; Pakistan: Fifty Years of Nationhood, 1999, Westview Press; A Historical Dictionary of Pakistan, Scarecrow Press, 1999) and on development (First Things First (with Paul Streeten), Oxford University Press, 1981; and Transforming Socialist Economies: Lessons from Cuba and Beyond (edited, with Daniel P. Erikson), Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). In 2007, he published Changing Perceptions, Altered Reality: Pakistan’s Economy under Musharraf, 1999-2006 (Oxford University Press, Karachi).^[2]

  Other activities

Burki writes an opinion piece for a Pakistani newspaper (Dawn) once a week. He is also a frequent contributor of opinion pieces to the Daily Times.

Burki is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Public Policy in Lahore, Pakistan.

Samar Mubarakmand

Samar Mubarakmand (Urdu: ثمر مبارک مند; b. 17 September 1942; NI, HI, SI, FPAS), is a Pakistani nuclear physicist known for his research in gamma spectroscopy and experimental development of the linear accelerator.^[1]

He came to public attention as the director of the team responsible for the performing the country’s first and successful atomic tests (see Chagai-I and Chagai-II) in the Chagai weapon testing laboratories, located in the Balochistan Province of Pakistan.^[2] Prior to that, he was the project director of the integrated missile programme and supervised the development of first Shaheen-I missile program in 1995. He was also the founding chairman of Nescom from 2001 until 2007.  Education

 

Samar Mubarakmand was born in Rawalpindi, Punjab Province of the British Indian Empire, on 17 September 1942.^[3] He earned his education from Lahore and matriculated from the St. Anthony’s High School in 1956.^[3] After passing the university entrance exams, he enrolled at the Physics Department of Government College University where he studied physics under dr. RM Chaudhry. He earned his undergraduate, B.Sc. degree, in Physics in 1958, and entered in the post-graduate school of Government College University. He conducted his research at the High Tension Laboratory (HTL), and his master’s thesis contained the detail work on the construction and development of the Gamma ray spectrometer.^[1] His master’s thesis was supervised under the close collaboration of dr. RM Chaudhry and subsequently awarded the M.Sc. in Nuclear physics in 1962 from Government College University.^[1]

 

In 1962, he won a doctoral scholarship and commenced doctoral research at Oxford University. At Oxford, he studied Compton scattering and the dynamical theory of Gamma spectroscopy with Shaukat Hameed Khan. After his long doctoral research, he submitted his doctoral thesis on experimental nuclear physics and was awarded his PhD in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Oxford in 1966 under the renowned nuclear physicist D. H. Wilkinson.^[4] During his time in Oxford, Mubarakmand closely collaborated and studied with Shaukat Hameed Khan at the Physics Department, learning about the Linear accelerators, and after returning to Pakistan he built one.^[5] At Oxford, he was part of the team that commissioned a 22 million volt atomic accelerator.^[5] After returning to Pakistan, Mubarakmand was posted by the government at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1966.^[5]

 Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC)

See also: Project-706

In 1966, he was encouraged by senior scientist dr. Naeem Ahmad Khan to join the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) to do his post-doctoral research in physics.^[6] In 1967, he was joined the “Nuclear Physics Group” (NPG) working under the direction of Naeem Ahmad Khan, and had worked closely on Bashiruddin Mahmood and Hafeez Qureshi on engineering problems involving the reactor physics and the methods involving the gas centrifuges.^[6]He was subsequently appointed by the government to assist the Space programme.

 

After his active role in Pakistan’s integrated atomic bomb project, Mubarakmand took personal initiatives in the development of the space program where he largely contributed his research in computational fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, and fluid physics. In Pakistan’s scientific circle, he is known as father of Pakistan’s missile program where he has reportedly been present at the flight test facilities of Pakistan.^[12] In 1987, Ministry of Defence, jointly collaborating with Ministry of Science, initiated the integrated missile program, an equivalent program to India’s Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMDP). The government assigned the projects to be jointly led under the leadership of Dr. Samar Mubarakmand and Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.

 

In 1995, Mubarakmand became chief project coordinator of Shaheen program, and the following year, Mubarakmand was made director of the missile program. Mubarakmand’s team successfully developed the solid boosters and solid engine for Shaheen-I program. This was later followed by developing the Shaheen-II, Shaheen-III, Babur missile, and the Ghaznavi missile system.^[13]

As a “Science and Technology” member at the Planning Commission of Pakistan, he has been staunch supporter of rocket science in the country. Talking to the media on August 18, 2009, Mubarakmand has Pakistan would launch its own satellite in April 2011 it made some things seem all to obvious to analyst familiar with the subject.^[14]

 

He described the satellite as being able to monitor agricultural programs, minerals programs and weather conditions and that it was funded by the Pakistani Planning Commission. He went on to say there were sufficient funds for the defense, nuclear and space programs. Whether this will be a less than 100 kg first test satellite or a much heavier satellite remains to be seen.^[15]

 Thar Coal Power Project

Mubarakmand is currently^[when?] supervising coal mining practiced on scientific lines for the Thar Coal Power Project.^{[citation needed]}

 Popular legacy and honors

Samar Mubarakmand is widely credited with bringing modernization in the design and development of many components and instruments that are the backbone of Pakistan‘s nuclear and missile technology.^[16] Mubarakmand is honored with Pakistan‘s highest civilian awards; Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 1993; followed by Hilal-e-Imtiaz in 1998 and the Nishan-e-Imtiaz in 2003. In 2000, he secured the fellowship of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences (PAS), and was inducted by his mentor Ishfaq Ahmad. In 2007, Samar Mubarakmand was promoted to government portfolio and held the office of the special assistant to the Prime minister on Science and Technology which he held until April 2008. On 16 December 2008, he was sent to join the Planning Commission as a member of the science and technology bureau headed by his mentor, Ishfaq Ahmad, since 2008.Thar coalfield project.^{[3][dead link}