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05
In Conversation with the Principal Aitchison College,
Dr. Syed Muhammad Turab Hussain
Dr. S. M. Turab Hussain is an academic with extensive experience in teaching, research and
administration. He is an Associate Professor of Economics and has taught at both LUMS and the
University of Essex, UK. He served as the Chair of the Economics Department, LUMS, for nine years and
has authored numerous public policy reports, research papers, book chapters and a book. Dr. Hussain did
his BA, Economics from the College of Wooster, US and MA and PhD in Economics from the University
of Essex, UK. He also has a BA from Government College, Lahore. Dr. Hussain completed his schooling at
Aitchison College where he was a boarder for eight years.
Q. Having a vast experience of studying and teaching locally and internationally, what do
you believe is the most serious challenge Pakistan faces today?
A. Currently, with a population of two-thirty million people, do you know what our exports at
the end of the day are? Twenty-eight to thirty billion dollars a year. Now, compare this to
our remittances which are thirty to thirty-two billion dollars a year. So we get more money
by exporting unskilled labor to the Gulf countries and elsewhere, than by exporting our
products. Why? Because our products are not competitive. And, why aren’t they
competitive? Because, at the end of the day, we haven’t invested in education, technology or
skills. So, in a world of ideas, we’re nowhere. Have we come up with an innovation of any
worth? We are just recipients of technology and those technological innovations are done in
the West. So, in the international realm, look at the size of our country and the level of our
productivity. And, this is all because of the fact that the basic education which is the right of
every citizen, is not provided across the country. Now, just imagine Aitchison College and
imagine institutions similar to Aitchison College dotted all around Pakistan. Would
Pakistan be a different country? Similarly, imagine two or three institutions the quality of
LUMS (with its four to five thousand students) in every big city of Pakistan. Would Pakistan
be a different country? Certainly. And so, I think it’s a great opportunity in the sense that all
we need is some basic skills and education in computing, for instance, and we manage to
provide a service making websites, etcetera, for the international market, along considerable
growth and revenue.
So, the thing is that people on their own will somehow survive but it’s the responsibility of
the state to provide them with basic education and good health, because health is equally
important too. As compared to other countries, Pakistan has one of the highest physical
health deprivation rate, and that, at the end of the day, leads to mental deprivation. If your
nutritional levels are not good when you’re young, what happens is that your physical
growth as well as your mental health get affected. So, imagine you have a large number of
boys like you coming from poor families. They naturally did not get proper meals so that
their cognitive skills are affected. Isn’t that a tragedy? However, what if all government
schools start offering nutritional mid-day meals and families would then send their kids to
school because if not education, their kids would still be getting good food there? We
haven’t been able to do that even, while, schools in Europe and America all offer mid-day
meals. By the way, here, let me tell you that soon we will also have proper lunch served to
all the day-boys at Aitchison.