Heartbeat.

• Author: Desal, Nitin
• Position: Tribute to development economist Mahbub ul Haq - Obituary

Mahbub ul Haq, who died on 16 July 1998, was a visionary economist and creator of UNDP's widely acclaimed Human Development Report.

A tribute from Nitin Desal, Under-Secretary-General, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Mahbub ul Haq had a rare combination of four gifts which make an intellectual a visionary - strong humanism, passionate beliefs, clarity of thought and pragmatism - which he applied in equal measure to the promotion of the ideas dearest to him: the pursuit of human development, to changing things in his home country, Pakistan, and to the entire range of complexities in the situation in the subcontinent. I first heard of Mahbub in the early seventies when India embarked on an ambitious anti-poverty programme, and his work on "The Poverty Curtain" was attracting attention in India and elsewhere. Later, we met during the preparation for the Earth Summit in Rio. Mahbub sought to inject a human dimension into the debate.

Mahbub, more than any other development economist, is responsible for getting us to recognize that the true measure of development is not an increase in production, but the impact that it has on the dignity of each human being, individually. Hence, the emphasis on meeting basic needs on eradicating poverty, on gender equality, on empowerment, on decentralization - all of these are goals that Mahbub sought to place at the entire centre of policymaking.

He worked at his objectives in many different ways: as a World Bank official, as a cabinet member in his own country, as the guiding spirit of a variety of international networks and as a writer and publicist of formidable eloquence and clarity.

Many of these elements came together in the way in which he developed and established the Human Development Report, whose objective was precisely what he had fought for from the very beginning - the dignity of each human being, individually. He brought to it a spirit of intellectual innovation, most notably in the human development index. He was willing to provoke controversy. He recognized the importance of presentation and packaging so as to maximize impact and attract attention. And he also know that to do this all he had to build a team - within the office and in a network of very eminent advisers that he brought together.

Mahbub did not stop at the global report. He knew that the real focus for action on human development is at the national level. He decided to return to Pakistan, set up the centre in...