Rehman Sobhan

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Rehman Sobhan
রেহমান সোবহান
British India, Now Kolkata, West Bengal, India
NationalityBangladeshi
Alma materSt. Paul's School, Darjeeling
OccupationEconomist
Spouse(s)
(m. 1962; died 2003)

Independence Day Award
(2008)

Rehman Sobhan (

Independence Day Award, Bangladesh's highest civilian honour, in 2008.[2][3]

Education and career

Sobhan with his mother Hashmat Ara Begum and younger brother Farooq Sobhan (1952)

Sobhan's father, Khondker Fazle Sobhan, was a graduate of

Cambridge University to earn his bachelor's degree. In late 1966, Sobhan went to the LSE
for his graduate studies but returned, without completing his degree, to Dhaka in March 1969 after the fall of the Ayub regime.

After completing his undergraduate degree at Cambridge, Sobhan moved to Dhaka in January 1957.

President of Pakistan Ayub Khan expressed the opposite point of view.[1]

After the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, Sobhan was appointed a member of the Planning Commission. He quit when he, along with others, fell from the grace of

Sheikh Mujib in 1975. Later he worked as the director-general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. Between 1976 and 1979, he was a visiting fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. After retirement from BIDS, he set up Centre for Policy Dialogue
in 1993, a high-profile private sector think-tank, where he works as its Executive Chairman.

Pre-independence contributions

In the 1960s, Sobhan, with a number of other nationalist economists under the intellectual leadership of Nurul Islam, contributed to the drafting of the six-points programme that became the basis for the struggle for autonomy in the then East Pakistan. The writings of this group of economists on the regional disparity between West Pakistan (Pakistan since 1971) and East Pakistan (Bangladesh since 1971) played an important role in fomenting nationalist aspirations of the people of Bangladesh. During the liberation war (from 26 March to 16 December 1971), he was a roving ambassador for Bangladesh and lobbied in the United States.

Post-independence activities

After the independence of Bangladesh, Sobhan became one of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's four members of the Planning Commission.[4] He left the country after he was asked to quit. Upon his return to Bangladesh in 1982, he joined Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) and later he founded the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD). Currently he is the chairman of CPD, which is active in open public discussions of policy issues, particularly in the area of governance. He was appointed an advisor of the Caretaker Government in Bangladesh in 1990–91.

Family

Sobhan married

political scientist and a Distinguished Fellow at CPD. Sobhan's younger brother, Farooq Sobhan, is a former diplomat and the current President of Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, a private-sector think-tank of Bangladesh.[4] His son Zafar Sobhan is the editor of the English daily Dhaka Tribune published from Dhaka.[4]

Selected bibliography

Books

Chapters in books

Journal articles

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "In conversation with Professor Rehman Sobhan". The Daily Star. 4 April 2015. Retrieved 6 November 2017.
  2. ^ "CA hands over Independence Award". The Daily Star. UNB. 26 March 2008. Retrieved 31 December 2013.
  3. ^ "CPD Team". Centre for Policy Dialogue. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
  4. ^
    ISSN 0971-751X
    . Retrieved 8 November 2017.
  5. ^ Hossain, Hameeda (2012). "Sobhan, Salma". In Sirajul Islam; Ahmed A. Jamal (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (2nd ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved 7 November 2017.