Untranquil Recollections

The book brings together Rehman Sobhan’s personal story situated within the historical events of Bangladesh, from its birth as East Pakistan to its evolution as an independent, democratic state.UNTRANQUIL RECOLLECTIONS: The Years of Fulfilment is a memoir of Rehman Sobhan, a prominent economist and public intellectual who played an active role  in the Bangladeshi national movement of the 1960s. It is a narration of events by the author who lived through extraordinary phases in the histories of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the impact they had on him. His story relates to the life and perspectives of an individual born into a family of relative privilege and educated at elite schools. Later on, his life moved on to a different trajectory from its intended path and he eventually came to be involved in the political struggles that culminated in the emergence of an independent Bangladesh.

Rehman Sobhan is a noted Bangladeshi economist and freedom fighter who played an active role in the Bangali national movement. He is currently the Chairman, Centre for Policy Dialogue, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He was educated at St. Paul’s School, Darjeeling; Aitchison College, Lahore; and the University of Cambridge. He was one of the several economists whose ideas influenced the 6-point programme of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which became the basis for the struggle for self-rule for Bangladesh. A former Professor of Economics at Dhaka University, he has authored numerous books and articles on various developmental issues. The most recent of these, Challenging the Injustice of Poverty: Agendas for Inclusive Development in South Asia, was published by SAGE in 2010.He served the first Government of Bangladesh as Envoy Extraordinaire with special responsibility for Economic Affairs, during the Liberation War in 1971. He was a member of the first Bangladesh Planning Commission, and in the 1980s headed the premier development research facility, BIDS. In 1990–91, he became a Member of the Advisory Council of the President of Bangladesh in charge of the Ministry of Planning and the Economic Relations Division. In 1993, he founded and became the Chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), one of Bangladesh’s most prestigious think tanks. He also headed the South Asia Centre for Policy Studies (SACEPS) from 2000 to 2005, one of the leading think tanks for promoting regional cooperation in South Asia.