Goodreads asked Shahid Hussain Raja:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Shahid Hussain Raja Idea for writing about the history of economic development of Pakistan came into mind when I wrote a two-piece article about the development experience of Pakistan’s first military regime which ruled the country for a decade from 1958 to 1968. It was published in two instalments in the now defunct daily newspaper ‘The Muslim’ in the last week of September, 1979 and was appreciated for its condensation of the debate about the policies pursued during the Ayub regime and their short term and long term consequences. I intended to follow it up by writing a similar long form essays about the successive periods of Pakistan’s development history. However due to paucity of time at my disposal during the service I could not complete this exercise.

After my retirement I started working on it and its first volume is in front of you in the form of a short book about the six decades of history of economic development of Pakistan. It will be followed by volume two in which I will discuss the challenges Pakistan is facing in general and its political economy in particular and how far it can respond to those challenges as well as a plan of action to do so.

Free from unnecessary jargon, notes and graphs, it is in between an article which you can read in one sitting and a book for which you need many days. Although I have written this book primarily for the students of development studies and general readers but others also, may be economists, students, policy makers and public servants can find it useful as a short handy book which attempts to chart the 60 years of the journey of a post-colonial state in the backdrop of changing global perspectives. Specifically, it tries to raise some questions- what went wrong and what worked during the development process of a post-colonial state, and ends with the lessons learnt which provide guidelines for countries struggling to improve the quality of life of their citizens.

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