KARACHI: Dr. Farrukh Iqbal, Dean & Director IBA presented his first academic lecture after joining IBA on the topic “The Inclusivity of the Development Process in Pakistan” at the AERC (Applied Economics Research Centre) for the Prof Dr Ehsan Rashid Memorial Lecture, on Thursday. The lecture session started with the recitation from the Holy Quran.

Dr Samina welcomed Dr Farrukh Iqbal and all the guests. She shed light on the life of Prof. Dr Ehsan Rashid, who laid the foundation for AERC in 1973 and was also AERC’s first director’ who devoted his life to acquiring knowledge and promoting education.

Dr Farrukh said that he was part of the early development stages of AERC and that he was returning to it after a long gap of 35 years and was very pleased to be back. Shedding light on human development, Dr. Farrukh said that Inclusivity Development some would say is a fad term but in his opinion it was here to stay for good. Some areas which Dr Farrukh elaborated upon were marginalized groups, child mortality rate amongst the poor, balanced development, social development, measures for inequality in income, health and education; within the context of the Pakistani environment.

Encouraging the applied Economists, he said all Economists should take a concept and look at it empirically, he also encouraged them to delve in Google research as a starting point as it’s a facility that wasn’t available 20 years ago but for concrete research one should go to primary data for conclusive results. Dr. Farrukh also shared UNDP and Oxfam’s definitions for Inclusive Development. The focus of his lecture was on the poor and marginalized sector of Pakistan, Dr. Farrukh shared that the child mortality has declined within the past 5 years from 125 in 2006-7 to 119 five years later and the bottom quintile for children going to school has risen from 5.9 to 6.1.

Sharing his research with the learned audience, Dr Farrukh concluded that the overall data shows that child mortality has declined over the years, whereas health and education inequalities have increased.—PR