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A `very rewarding' investment

Rasheeda Bhagat

It was his mother who got him interested in education... not only his own education and that of his children. She provided the spark which spurred him to do something for providing quality education to generations of youngsters in Lahore, the city the family hails from. As a result, the Pakistani industrialist, Syed Babar Ali, today wears as a badge of honour his reputation as the father of the Lahore University of Educational Sciences (LUMS).

``My mother grew up before the turn of the century and got married in 1904. She had never been to school herself but her father was a very learned person and brought up his three daughters like sons. They were educated in Urdu and Pers ian.''

With his maternal uncles being ministers in the court of

Maharaja Ranjit Singh, ``there was lot of State craftsmanship and education in her family.''

Coming from such a family, his mother ensured her children were properly educated. After school hours and during holidays, she would engage scholars to engage with the children. ``In our family there wasn't that emphasis on doing business an d making money.. the important thing was to apply your money better. My father, a successful businessman, was also a very pious, modest, austere and liberal person. He lived simply and believed in giving away,'' says Babar Ali, who was in Chen nai recently to

participate in an Indo-Pak peace initiative sponsored by The Hindu.

Hailing from a family where tarbiyat -- something which is more than education and etiquette -- was of utmost importance, he was the first in his family to go to the US for a course in business administration at the University of Michigan. ``I went out in December 1946 from an undivided India and came back to Pakistan.''

But it was later, in 1973, when he went to Harvard for an advanced course in business management that he felt that though his business establishment had a good training module for managers, other business houses in Pakistan were not s o fortunate as there was a dearth of well-trained managers.

That was the thought behind the setting up of LUMS. Certain that he didn't want it to be a one-man university which would fade away after him, he made an earnest attempt and roped in a group of ``of dedicated people who were able to give both time and money and, today, by the grace of God, LUMS has established itself as a successful university''.

Going back to what he learnt early in life -- that how you spend your money is more important than how you earn it -- one of his fundamental beliefs is that the best investment you can make is in education. And so, Babar Ali has constituted over 100 scholarships in his mother's name for girls in Pakistan. ``I find this very rewarding.''

On the business front, this soft-spoken and modest Pakistani industrialist wears many an impressive label. In 1955, he established Packages Ltd, a joint venture with Akerlund & Rausing of Sweden, which was a pioneering paper-manufacturing, c onverting and packaging plant for the Pakistani consumer industry. Today, it is a leading integrated paper packaging company in Pakistan.

In 1974, he was invited to head the public sector National Fertiliser Corporation -- his mandate was the setting up of three major fertiliser plants and a nationwide marketing and distribution system. In 1981 he set up Milkpak Ltd, the company which collected milk from farmers and packed it in Tetrapak containers. With Nestle joining hands in 1987, the joint venture, which has gone into a wide range of dairy products and confectionery, is a leading food company in Pa kistan today.

At present, Babar Ali is the Chairman of the board of directors of Coca-Cola Beverages -- Pakistan, First International Investment Bank, Aventis CropScience, Aventis Pharma and Siemens Pakistan. In 1993, he became Pakistan's Minister for Finance, Economic Affairs and Planning in the interim government, before Benazir Bhutto returned to power. He is currently a member of the Economic Advisory Board of Pakistan.

So how does a man who has had such economic feathers in his cap feel about the present state of the country's economy?

``Sad. Unfortunately, Pakistan has not seen good governance for a long, long time. This Government inherited a very sad economic situation; the rot has been spreading for the last 20 years.''

The former Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, too played his role in wrecking Pakistan's economy. ``He never grew up on the economic front.'' With fancy schemes like the yellow cabs scheme, the Lahore-Islamabad motorway which is ``a millstone r ound our necks'', and the prime minister's secretariat, he took the economy near its bottom. ``He did not realise that this was not the time to build a Taj Mahal. We are a poor country and we have to live according to our means. One cannot hav e grandiose ideas. And Benazir was no better.''

But he is optimistic that Pakistan can overcome the present gloomy economic scenario if it learns to value its greatest asset -- its people. ``Despite all our travails, the amazing thing is the average Pakistani's ability to survive. They ar e gutsy, entrepreneurial, and have an urge to improve themselves. Long before the oil boom in the Middle East, and before Dubai emerged on the world screen, they seized the opportunity to go to the Gulf area. There were no ships from Pakistan, but people would go in sail boats carrying goods, and many of these would drown. But people were willing to risk their lives to improve their lot.''

He says this is true of the entire sub-continent from where people have gone to many countries, sometimes illegally. ``But once there, they work better than the locals, make an honest living and contribute to the local economy.''

Babar Ali feels that the Pakistan Government should explore the potential of Pakistanis living abroad and win their trust. ``The GDP of Pakistanis living abroad is more than the GDP of Pakistan today. But this wealth has been earned through hard wor k. There are tens of thousands of people who might have $50,000 or $100,000 as their capital. But this money will only come back when they feel the country is better run.''

He says that today India has more money coming in from NRIs than any other source. The same is true of China which looks at the overseas Chinese as its greatest asset. ``They look upon a Chinese whether in Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, US, or even Taiwan as a big asset. They might have their guns pointing to each other but the biggest investors in mainland China today are people from Taiwan,'' he says.

But, today, if a Pakistani does not send home more money than is necessary to take care of the immediate needs of his family members, and to build a home, and prefers to keep his savings abroad, ``you can't blame him. If you want him to inv est, you have to win his confidence by running the country well and assuring him that whatever money made available to the Government is well spent and not on building Taj Mahals''.

On Indo-Pak ties, Babar Ali is actively involved in a Track II diplomacy effort through a group called Balusa which had its first meeting in India in Chennai. He says Pakistani businessmen are very keen that Indo-Pak relations which are in a lim bo right now improve, as catering to the bigger Indian market will help their business.

So what kind of a working day does he keep?

``I'm busy from 5 a.m. till 9 p.m., seven days a week. I pray early in the morning and then my wife and I are off on the bicycle for our morning exercise to a nearby college campus... before the traffic starts.''

His family is closely knit. Both his daughter and son live in Lahore; he in a separate house on the same campus and she, 10 minutes' drive away. One rule in the family is that every day the dinner is at the parents' house.

As for his reading habits, Babar Ali loves to read Urdu and Persian poetry. ``I'm reading all the time; I don't read fiction, but things like history and biography.'' In Chennai, he was found browsing at the Landmark bookstore, hunting for the hi story of Junagarh, which he couldn't get!

He is fond of both vocal and instrumental music from the sub-continent, with the Qawaali being his favourite.

Picture: Mr Syed Babar Ali

Picture by Shaju John