I first heard about Abul Maal Abdul Muhith in the 60s when I was a young unemployed man eager for a job. We heard about Mr. Muhith who had been a brilliant student and topped his batch in the highly esteemed civil service examination of Pakistan. Prior to the civil service exam, he had excelled in all academic exams starting from matriculation to MA. I myself qualified in the erstwhile CSP Cadre (now called BCS) following my participation in the said exam held in 1970/1971. Mr Muhith’s youngest brother, Dr AK Abdul Momen, now our Foreign Minister, qualified in the same exam with me and so we became colleagues and friends. I naturally got to know more about him from Dr Momen. Mr Muhith was then a much-praised secretary in the Economic Relations Division (ERD) of the Ministry of Finance. Furthermore, his name was already highly circulating in the administrative set-up and the public arena as a brave young diplomat who had left his comfortable position of a counsellor at the Pakistan embassy in Washington in June 1971. He then joined the Liberation War of Bangladesh.
I directly got to know him some years later in Geneva, Switzerland, where I was then posted as Minister (Economic) in our permanent mission. Mr. Muhith, by then a retired civil servant, was visiting Geneva for two weeks as a consultant of a UN organisation. We had some intensive interactions and got to know each other quite well. It appeared to me that he took a liking to me which, fortunately, lasted for the rest of our lives.
In July 2005, I joined Bangladesh Awami League after my retirement from civil service in 2003. By then, Mr. Muhit was already a prominent Awami League insider and reportedly privy to Sheikh Hasina, the President of Awami League. He was heading a team writing an updated manifesto for Awami League titled “A Charter for Change”.
We both fought in the 2008 general elections with Awami League tickets and won our coveted seats at parliament. Mr Muhith became finance minister in the new cabinet in January 2009. I remained a back-bencher in parliament. Following Awami league’s return to power after the 2014 general elections, in which both of us were successful, Mr Muhith again became finance minister, and I was included in the cabinet as a state minister of finance.
Despite being a respected senior in every way, his attitude towards me was warm and brotherly. I also had a very respectful approach towards him, particularly because of his towering personality. Although my position at the ministry was really marginal, my obedience to him was total. I am happy to assert that I fully enjoyed working directly under him.
In my view, his position with regard to public finance management was inclusive, liberal, market-oriented and generally growth-friendly. He presented ever-larger budgets year after year, and consciously diverted more and more public funds towards infrastructure, energy, education, health and agriculture. This strategy perfectly reflected my own position. There were occasions, I admit, when we disagreed but these became no barriers to our joint path towards achieving higher growth. In hindsight, I can say that we both belonged to the left of centre arena in the development trajectory. But I think he was to my right. We both agreed that the budget had to tilt progressively towards the huge low-income groups of our citizenry. We agreed that the level of poverty was unacceptable and it needed to be addressed bravely. This resulted in the considerably large Social Safety Net Program (SSN) we see now. Fortunately, our team leader and trendsetter was none other than the prime minister herself. She set the tune for the new development strategy of Bangladesh, which can be called growth-with-justice-oriented. She wanted, inter alia, to lower poverty, increase literacy and provide respectable healthcare for the general population. She wanted electricity to reach every home in the country by 2021! And she achieved it in 2021! Mr Muhith and I, therefore, wholeheartedly enjoyed working under Sheikh Hasina’s progressive humanist economic policies.
The prime minister wanted to build the Padma Bridge with our own money, and Mr Muhith stood by her courageously. Our achievements in all these fields are now known to everyone at home and to many abroad. It has been my pride and honour to have served Bangladesh during this time of leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and contribute heartily in translating, on the ground, the operational Programs largely authored by Mr Muhith.
Our country is now credibly poised for take-off into the higher-middle-income country level by 2030, and a developed country status by 2041!
For all of these positive changes in Bangladesh, I will always remember Mr. Muhith with gratitude and admiration. I wish for him a place in the heavens as ordained by the Almighty.
MA Mannan is the Planning Minister of Bangladesh.