This book presents the author’s memories of his life through three momentous periods of history traversed by him.
Part I gives the story of the author as he lived through the struggle for self-determination of the then East Pakistan leading to its independence. Part II recounts the author’s experience as a member of first planning commission of Bangladesh and as a teacher in the first four years after the country’s independence, when he sought, unsuccessfully, to promote social mobilisation for development and a standard of teaching in the Economics Department of Dhaka University. This part includes accounts of some outstanding social mobilization efforts in the country after independence, and presents an assessment of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who in the author’s view did not understand the transformation toward which the nation had moved through its liberation war. The final part recounts the author’s struggle and successes, after he was thrown in exile in the last quarter of 1975, to find a professional base abroad without sacrificing his “Ideology”, and there after to promote participatory action research on a global scale through the International Labour Office. A Postscript presents the author’s thinking on the historical moment that he sees as having arisen on January 11,2007 of dong away with feudal economic relations in the country-another moment that also seems to be slipping away.
Md. Anisur Rahman
Born in Bangladesh (1933) professor Muhammad Anisur Rahman was trained in Economics at Dhaka University and Harvard University. Initially a theoretical economics he thought at Dhaka University and Islamabad University at Rawalpindi. As traced in this book, after independence of Bangladesh Anisur Rahman transcend the boundaries of economics to become a “student of life”. Since then he has been advocating “people’s self-development” challenging conventional top-down development thinking.
He joined the international Labour office in Geneva in 1977 to initiate and direct a global programme on “Participatory Organisations of the Rural Poor” providing a leadership in the theoretical and practical articulation of participatory Action Research (PAR). He retired from the ILO in 1990 and has been instrumental in introducing and promoting PAR in Bangladesh through “Research Initiatives-Bangladesh” (RIB), a research-funding agency, as one of the honorary founding members of its Board of Directors.
Singing Tagore’s songs is Anisur Rahman’s principal aesthetic pursuit in which he was distinguished himself with a distinctive style of his own. He has been writing on Tagore singing and also giving workshops and lectures in Bangladesh and in Kolkata and Santiniketan on developing one’s singing voice following modern vocal science. Anisur Rahman was awarded the biennial “Rabindra Purashkar” (Rabindra prize) by the Rabindra Parishad of Patna, Bihar, India, in May 2004 for his contribution to Tagore’s music and literature.
