C.5 An Institute of Economic Growth and Society
     
    There has, moreover, been a rising awareness that environmental conditions and resources must be respected in strategies of economic growth. The environmental destruction that heedless economic development has produced in the ex-USSR and elsewhere have made evident that "sustainable economic growth" is more than a popular slogan, and is a requirement of sound policy. As the Rio de Janeiro Conference proclaimed last year, the pursuit of economic growth and environmental protection are fatefully intertwined.
     
  5.5 Laying forth these complex interrelations of economic growth with governance, institution-building, and environmental protection is to present a daunting array of challenges. There may be understandable dispositions to think that AKU is too modest an institution to tackle such large questions. We do, however, believe it should not shirk the challenge and should address the frontier issues in economic growth in their presently perceived complexity, giving particular attention to the Muslim world and the interactions between its history and culture and its contemporary institutions and problems.
     
  5.6 A fully comprehensive agenda covering all the determinants and conditions of growth might be overwhelming. At various stages in the Commission's deliberations we have given particular attention to one or another of the subjects set forth above. The question of governance of Muslim and developing societies has repeatedly entered our discussions. We have considered and rejected the idea of proposing a special component of AKU devoted to governance or public administration , seeking AKU's contributions on these vital matters in other ways, such as what the Institute of Islamic Civilisations may do for the education of citizens in Muslim societies and for the understanding of their governance problems. Similarly we have explored the idea of institutes of architecture and development that would be engaged in spatial planning and environmental questions. AKU's efforts in the generic problems of development would thus be scattered in different parts of the University, rather than being entrusted to a single component.
     
  5.7 We believe, nonetheless, that AKU should establish an "Institute on Economic Growth and Society" that would be very broadly concerned with the major determinants of development. It would have a core group of economists but would be freely interdisciplinary. It would conduct research and writing, and offer post-graduate training, beginning with short courses and workshops, and later adding Masters and Doctors degrees as need and feasibility indicate. The Institute, should actively seek consulting and advisory contracts and engage in policy and programme issues. We believe it could begin at a modest size, with two senior and half a dozen junior staff (these latter as junior faculty, post or predoctoral students). We would expect it to double its staff over the years as its activities grow.
     
  5.8 Depending upon location, such aii Institute could serve as the nucleus of a broader AKU competence in economic policy aud analysis. The Commission has been concerned that AKU is rapidly becoming engaged in matteters of health and educational policy which require economic competencies it does not now have. The growth of the already starting programme in Health Policy and Management will sharpen die need for such competencies. If the Institute we it are proposing were located in Karachi it could, witil suitable expansion serve as a general locus of economic competencies for the University.
     
    There will also be broader needs foiinstruction in economics as liberal arts education grows in AKU. The broadened educatioual programme we envisage for the Faculty of Healtli Sciences, and the College of Arts and Sciences that we expect to come along later, should have good basic courses in economics that will require qualified professors. In the continuing educatioll functions in various fields that we envisage as an important part of AKU's future activlities, instruction in economics should certainly have a place. It might even happen that at some point ill the future the Institute of Economic Growth and Society would be linked to a (suitably nontraditional) department of economics in AKU.
     
  5.9 The Harvard Report recommended a Centre or School of Development Policy aud Management for AKU and proposed that it be located in Kenya, with a site in India as a possible alternative. Despite some advantages, just reviewed, of a Karachi location, this Commission is disposed to favour an East African location for the Institute we are proposing, again with the possibility of India as an alternative. It would seem likely that Kenya might emerge as a preferred location in East Africa, but we empbasise that we conceive this Institute as having an international outlook and vocation; it would naturally be attentive to the regional ties that will be important to Africa's economic growth and that are given new scope by reliance on open, market economies.
     
    Our conception of the Institute of Economic Growth and Society would put more emphasis on research and policy than management, though certainly not to the exclusion of the latter. As we suggested above, the AKU's Institute should have its educational impact in its first years through short courses, workshops and seminars, particularly with middle- and seniorlevel people, avoiding the large scale investment that would be involved in a full-fledged school of management. We would of course want to see the Institute making serious contributions to the economic growth of Muslim societies and to the South Asian region. Both these objectives raise the prospect that the Institute would need to have a secondary locus in South Asia.
     
  5.10 Wherever located, the Institute we are proposing should be well linked to other parts of AKU, to AKDN, and to universities and research centres throughout the world. We would think there is a natural two-way relationship between an AKU centre concerned with economic growth and the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, to their mutual benefit. Reaching beyond AKDN, it would be essential that AKU establish good relations with some of the world's leading groups dealing with sustainable economic growth. The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's group on economic growth and the UNU's World Institute of Development Economics Research in Helsinki come to mind as attractive Possibilities. Visiting appointments at both senior and junior levels would be important means of establishing and sustaining such linkages.
     
  5.11 Such an Institute could not deal with all Of the conditions and aspects of economic growth that we identified above. But we would hope that it would contribute significantly on subjects that are not the normal business of economic analysis centres and that require the broad interdisciplinary outlook we believe it should have. We would hope in particular that this Institute might make significant contributions on the subject of governance, not solely in technical questions of the making of economic policy but on such matters as the costs of corruption and clientelism, and means of controlling them. The special questions of economics in Muslim societies would be a natural focus of attention, and their study might be facilitated by being placed in an international Muslim university, not beholden to a single government. The possibilities of bringing environmental considerations into the Institute's analyses would seem to be inevitably numerous, but AKU may in the longer run wish to have more focused attention on them, as would be one of the features of a component to which we now turn.

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