By Mahmood Hasan Khan
Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University, Canada
That man is Shoaib Sultan Khan (SSK). I have borrowed the title from his biography by Noel Cossins published in 2013.
I want readers to join me in celebrating SSK’s 90th birthday. Very few of us would reach this age; fewer who reach it would enjoy good health; and still fewer might dream of doing what SSK has achieved. Well, SSK is healthy and still doing work with his hat on. He leads a network of rural support programmes (RSPs) in Pakistan. Their aim is to help the rural poor improve their living conditions through a community-based self-help approach. This approach was pioneered by the late Akhter Hameed Khan (AHK) in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in the 1960s. In fact, it was there that SSK—he was then working in the civil service—first met AHK and was inspired by his vision, dedication and practice at Comilla. Continue reading Man in the Hat →