The Living Scripts | Dr SM Junaid Zaidi (HI, SI)

The sixth session of the series of programs titled ‘The Living Scripts’ was organized by IPS LEAD (the learning, excellence and development program of IPS) on August 7, 2019 with Dr Syed Muhammed Junaid Zaidi, founding rector of the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), who has recently assumed the responsibilities as the executive director, COMSATS (Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South).

Zaidi enlightened the audience with his life experiences, revealing that he was among the initial citizens who moved to the newly formed capital of Islamabad in 1960s.

Speaking of his early life and education, Zaidi shared that he initially wanted to become a pilot but couldn’t pursue his dream due to family resistance. He rather moved on to complete his Masters degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of the Punjab in1981. He then acquired another degree in Operations Research from the University of Birmingham in 1984, which was followed by the completion of his doctoral work from the similar university specializing in optimization of algorithims on networking. Later he was also conferred with an honorary degree of ‘Doctor of Science’ by the Lancaster University, UK in 2012.

The speaker also threw light on his experiences as the Director General of the National Center for Technology Transfer (1991–95) and as “Scientific Secretary & Chief S&T” with the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (1995–98), where he had the honor to draft Pakistan’s first ever IT policy.

The speaker shared that the idea of establishing an IT institute in Pakistan came to his mind during his visit to India, following which he convinced the concerned bodies in Pakistan over the matter, ending up with the establishment of COMSATS University, which he sees as one of his greatest achievements to date.

In addition, Dr Zaidi also shed light on his advisory missions to the countries like Fiji, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand and Vietnam, which he undertook as a UN-expert on IT, helping them to establish their technology transfer and industrial technology systems.

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ابتدائیہ

          انسٹیٹیوٹ آف پالیسی سٹڈیز نے ایسے افراد کے حالاتِ زندگی کے بارے میں انٹرویو چھاپنے کا سلسلہ شروع کر رکھا ہےجنہوں نے اپنی زندگی کے چند دن، مہینے یا سال ہی نہیں بلکہ کئی دہائیاں قومی خدمات میں صرف کیں، کئی ادارے اور نظام بنائے،  لاتعداد لوگوں کو روزگار مہیا کیا اور کئی افراد کو اس طرح تربیت اور مواقع فراہم کئے کہ آج وہ قومی وبین الاقوامی سطح پر وطنِ عزیز کا نام روشن کر رہے ہیں۔ اس سلسلے میں آج جس شخصیت کا انٹرویو پیشِ خدمت ہےوہ ایک ہمہ گیروہمہ جہت مثالی شخصیت ہیں۔ محترم ڈاکٹر سید محمد جنید زیدی (ستارہ امتیاز و ہلال امتیاز)  کامسیٹس کے حوالے سے کسی تعارف کے محتاج نہیں۔ آئیے اُن سے کی گئی بات چیت کی تفصیلات پڑھیں۔

تعارف

1998ء میں ایک ادارہ کامسیٹس انسٹیٹیوٹ آف انفارمیشن ٹیکنالوجی کے نام سے قائم کیا گیا اور دیکھتے ہی دیکھتے اُس کا نام پاکستان کی صفِ اوّل کی درسگاہوں میں ہونے لگا۔ اس ادارے کی تعمیر وترقی میں ڈاکٹر سید محمد جنید زیدی کی خدمات ناقابلِ فراموش ہیں اور یہی اُ نکی وجہ شہرت ہے۔ زیرِ نظر تفصیلات ڈاکٹر صاحب کی زبانی۔

بچپن

          میری پیدائش 1949ء میں راولپنڈی میں ہوئی۔ اُس وقت بھی راولپنڈی پاکستان کے چند اچھے شہروں میں شامل تھا۔ یہ ایک فوجی چھائونی/کینٹ تھا لیکن اس وقت کسی کے وہم وگمان میں بھی نہ تھا کہ اس سے ملحقہ علاقے نور پور شاہاں (بری امام) کو پاکستان کا دارالحکومت بنا دیا جائے گا۔ اس وقت کراچی ہر طرح کی سیاسی، کاروباری اور انتطامی سرگرمیوں کا مرکز تھا۔  صدر ایوب خان کے مارشل لاء کے بعد دارالحکومت بدل گیا اور ساری وزارتیں راولپنڈی منتقل ہوگئیں۔ جس کی وجہ سے حالات میں بہت تیزی سے تبدیلی آئی۔

          مجھے 1958ء اور 1959ء کی کچھ باتیں یاد ہیں۔ میں دس سال کا تھا۔ اُس وقت وہ بسیں تھیں جو آج بھی انگلستان میں چلتی ہیں یعنی ڈبل ڈیکر۔ وہ وقت پر آتی تھیں، لوگوں کی ایک قطار لگتی تھی اور پھر کنڈیکٹر بتاتا تھا کہ بس میں مزید گنجائش ہے یا نہیں ۔ تھوڑی دیر میں اگلی بس آجایا کرتی تھی۔ اُن دنوں شہر میں تانگے عام تھے۔ ٹیکسی بہت کم تھی۔ اسلام آبادکا تو اس وقت وجودہی نہیں تھا۔ بچوں کا زیادہ تر شغل ریلوے سٹیشن پر جا کر ریل گاڑیوں کو دیکھنا تھا اور سموسے کی پلیٹ ، جو ایک آنے کی ملتی تھی، سے لطف اندوز ہونا تھا۔ میں اور میری چھوٹی بہن اکثر اپنے والد سے ضد کرتے تھے کہ ہمیں ریلوے اسٹیشن لے چلیں۔چنانچہ ہمارے والد صاحب جن کو ہم ابا کہتے تھے شام کو اکثر سٹیشن پر لے جاتے تھے۔ اُن دنوں دفاتر صبح 7:15 بجے شروع ہوتے تھے اور دن 2:00 بجے چھٹی ہوجاتی تھی۔ زیادہ تر لوگ سائیکل پر آتے جاتے تھے اور گاڑیاں بہت ہی کم تھیں۔

          یہ وہ زمانہ تھا جب لوگ وقت کی پابندی کرتے تھے۔ وہ ریل گاڑی جسے ہم دیکھنے جاتے تھے شام 5:50 بجے کراچی سے آتی تھی۔ اس کا نام تیز گام تھا۔ وہ ہمیشہ وقت پر آتی تھی۔ ایک دن ایسا ہوا  کہ یہ گاڑی 20 منٹ لیٹ ہوگئی تو پورا ہفتہ اس پر بات ہوتی رہی کہ تیز گام کیوں لیٹ ہو گئی تھی۔ ویگن اور ویسپا  اسکوٹر اُسی زمانے کی یادگار ہیں۔ جب کوئی بچہ میٹرک میں پاس ہوتا تو اسے تحفے میں ایک قیمتی گھڑی دی جاتی تھی ۔ اُس کی قیمت اس وقت 100 روپے تھی۔                                                                                

          27 اکتوبر1958 ء کو ایوب خان نے ملک میں مارشل لاء نافذ کیا اور اس وقت کے صدر سکندر مرزا اور انکی اہلیہ ناہید مرزا کو ملک بدر کردیا۔ ان دونوں نے باقی تمام عمر انگلستان میں گزاری۔ صدر ایوب کے مارشل لاء کے بعد دارالحکومت بھی بدل گیا اور ساری وزارتیں راولپنڈی منتقل ہوگئیں جس کی وجہ سے حالات میں بہت تیزی سے تبدیلی آئی۔ کراچی سے راولپنڈی کو دارالخلافہ تبدیل کرنے کا عمل بھی کافی دلچسپ تھا۔ اسپیشل ٹرینیں چلائی گئیں اور تمام کام،  رہائش گاہیں، ڈسپنسری اور سکول تعمیر کرنے کے کام بخوبی انجام پائے۔ اس وقت کے لوگوں کو ضرور  داد  ملنی چاہئے جنہوں نے یہ کام سرانجام دئیے۔ کراچی کے بہ نسبت راولپنڈی ایک چھوٹا، ہرا بھرا اور صاف ستھرا شہر تھاجسکو لوگوں نے بہتر کیا۔ اس کے علاوہ یہاں پر انتظامات بہت اچھے تھے اور سہولیات بھی بہت تھیں۔ جو لوگ کراچی سے راولپنڈی آئے تو انکو یہاں پرسکونت اختیار کرتے ہوئے ذیادہ دقت پیش نہیں آئی۔

          میں نے کچھ تعلیم کراچی سے حاصل کی۔ اس کے بعد ہم راولپنڈی آگئے۔ مجھے یاد ہے کہ  میرے والدین کی اس بات  پراکثرلڑائی ہوتی تھی کہ امی کہتی تھیں کہ میں پہلے قرآن پاک ختم کرو پھر سکول جاؤں اور ابو کہتے تھے کہ نہیں، اسے اسکول بھیجو۔ جہاں پر ہم رہتے تھے وہاں اس وقت بجلی بھی نہیں تھی۔ ہم رات کو لالٹین کی روشنی میں پڑھتے تھے اور جلد سو جاتے تھے۔ صبح فجر کی نماز کے بعد پڑھائی کا سلسلہ شروع ہوجاتا تھا۔ اس وقت عمومی طور پر ابا اور امی دونوں فارغ ہوتے تھے تو  جس کو موقع ملتا، مجھے پڑھا دیتا۔ اس طرح مجھ کو ابتدائی دینی اور دنیاوی تعلیم بہت آسانی سے مل گئی۔ یہ میری خوش قسمتی تھی۔ میں نے انگریزی، سائنس، ریاضی سب گھر پر پڑھ لیا تھا لہذا سکول میں داخلہ پانچویں جماعت میں مل گیا۔ مجھے یاد ہے کہ  بچپن میں ہم پہلے نماز پڑھتے، پھر قرآن شریف کی تلاوت  کرتے اور پھر سکول کا سبق پڑھتے تھے ۔

          جب ہم راولپنڈی آئے تو ایک علاقہ جسکو آج کل ویسٹریج کہتے ہیں میں ہمیں رہائش ملی۔ میرے والد صاحب (ابا) اس وقت کابینہ ڈویثن میں یو ڈی سی تھے۔ ان کا نام سید محمد زبیر زیدی تھا۔ وہ ایک اصول پسند شخص تھے جنہوں نے ہماری تعلیم و تربیت پر توجہ دی۔ یہ انہی کی تربیت کا نتیجہ تھا کہ میں اس مقام تک پہنچا۔

          کیبنٹ ڈویزن کے جو سیکرٹری تھے ان کا نام این اے فاروقی تھا۔ پھر وہ سی ڈی اے میں چییرمین لگ گئے ان کا کام اسلام آباد کی آبادکاری کا تھا ۔یہ وہ ادارہ تھا جو بعد میں سی ڈی اے بن گیا۔ فاروقی صاحب بہت اصول پسند تھے۔ انہی دنوں G-6 کے پلاٹوں کی تقسیم کے لئے فارم تقسیم ہو رہے تھے۔ آپ یقین کریں کہ اس وقت پلاٹ کی قیمت صرف 1200 روپے تھی۔ سب دوستوں کے کہنے کے باوجود میرے والد نے فارم جمع نہیں کروایا۔

آپ کو یاد ہوگا کہ مسلم لیگ کا گڑھ لکھنؤ تھا جہاں سے پاکستان موومنٹ کاآغاز ہوا اور جہاں پر قائداعظم خود تشریف لائے تھے اور مسلم لیگ کے جلسوں کی صدارت کرتے تھے۔ میرے والد صاحب، دادا اور چچا نے ان جلسوں میں شرکت کی۔ ہمارا گھرانا شروع ہی سے پاکستان بننے والی تمام کوششوں میں شامل تھا۔ یہی وجہ ہے کہ میرے والد صاحب پاکستان  بنتے ہی یہاں آگئے۔

          جب دارلحکومت راولپنڈی منتقل ہوا تو یہاں پر کراچی سے آنے والے لوگوں کو بہت اچھی سہولیات مہیا کی گئیں ۔ اسکولوں ،ڈسپینسریوں اور کھیلوں کی سہولیات مہیا کی گئیں۔ایک اسکول کراچی سے راولپنڈی آنے والے بچوں کے لئے بنایا گیا تھا۔ میں نے اس میں داخلہ لیا۔ اس کی عمارت میں کوئی تزئین وآرائش نہ تھی۔ یوں کہئے کہ یہ سادہ سی فوجی بیرک تھی لیکن اساتذہ بہت اعلیٰ تھے۔ انکی تربیت بہت عمدہ تھی۔ انہوں نے ہماری کردار سازی میں بڑا اہم کردار ادا کیا۔ میں نے وہاں سے میٹرک کیا۔ میں اس وقت کافی شرارتی تھا اور پڑھائی میں دلچسپی کم تھی جس کا نتیجہ یہ ہوا کہ میں میٹرک میں اچھے نمبر نہ لے سکا۔ میرے سب دوستوں کے نمبرز مجھ سے زیادہ آئے۔ مجھے بڑا جھٹکا لگا۔ والد صاحب کی امیدوں پر پانی پھر گیا۔ بڑی مشکل سے گورمنٹ انٹرمیڈیٹ کالج سیٹلائیٹ ٹاؤن میں داخلہ ملا۔ میں نے بہت محنت کی اور اچھے نمبروں سے پاس ہوا۔ میں ہمیشہ سے اپنے اساتذہ سے متاثر تھا۔ مجھے آج بھی استاد بننے کا بہت شوق ہے۔

          آپکو یاد ہوگا کہ 1965ء میں پاک بھارت جنگ شروع ہوئی۔ اس کے بعد میں نے پی اے ایف میں بھرتی کے لئے اپلائی کیا اور میں جی ڈی پائیلٹ کے لئے منتخب ہوگیا لیکن والد صاحب نے جانے کی اجازت نہ دی اور کہا کہ مزید پڑھائی کرو۔ اس وقت تک ہمارے خاندان میں لڑکے بہت کم تھے اور والدین کو میری فکر رہتی تھی۔ میرا بھائی مجھ سے 18 برس چھوٹا ہے۔ وہ میرے بیٹے جیسا ہے۔ بہرحال میں نے پڑھائی جاری رکھی۔ گورنمنٹ کالج اصغر مال راولپنڈی سے بی ایس سی کاامتحان اچھے نمبروں میں پاس کر لیا۔ میرے مضامین فزکس اور ریاضی تھے۔ اس کے بعد اصغر مال کالج سے ایم ایس سی ریاضی کی ڈگری حاصل کی۔ یہ کالج پنجاب یونیورسٹی سے منسلک تھا۔ ایم ایس سی کرنے کے فورا بعد ہی اللہ میاں نے فیڈرل گورنمنٹ کالج اسلام آباد میں  لیکچرر شپ کی پوزیشن عطا کی۔ یہ کالج اسلام آباد کا سب سے پہلا کالج تھااور ہے۔ اس کے اساتذہ بڑے عظیم تھے اور ہیں اور ان کے پڑھائے ہوئے طلباء بہت اعلی مقام پر فائز ہیں۔

عملی زندگی کا آغاز

          میری پہلی اسائنمنٹ کالج لیول پر ریاضی پڑھانا تھی۔ 1972ء میں میرا تقرر فیڈرل گورنمنٹ کالج نمبرا میں لیکچرار کی حیثیت سے ہواجہاں میں نے دلجمعی سے کام کیا اور خوب محنت سے پڑھایا۔ میرے طلبہ نے اور میں نے اس کا بھرپور لطف اٹھایا۔ یہاں تقریباً ڈیڑھ دو سال کے قریب کام کیا۔ میں نےاسی سال سی ایس ایس کا امتحان بھی دے دیا اتفاق سے اور اللہ کی مہربانی سے میں نے امتحان پاس کرلیا ۔ امتحان پاس کرنے کے بعد ہمیں 1974ء میں سول سروسز اکیڈمی میں تربیت کے لئے بلایا گیا۔ ایک سال میں تربیت مکمل کرنے کے بعد وزارتِ مالیات (فنانس) میں سیکشن افسر کی حیثیت سے ذمہ داری سونپ دی گئی۔ یہ افسر بننا میرے والد صاحب کی خواہش تھی جسے میں نے پورا کیا۔ میرے والد صاحب کافی مطمئن اور خوش تھے۔

           ایک سال گزرنے کے بعد  ایک دن میں نے والد صاحب سے کہا کہ مجھے پڑھانا پسند ہے اگر آپ کہیں تو میں یہ ملازمت جاری رکھتا ہوں مگر میرا دل تدریس میں لگتا ہے  اس لئے مجھے تدریس میں جانے کی اجازت دے دیں جس پر انہوں نے کہا کہ میں تمہاری بہتری چاہتا ہوں، اب تمہاری اپنی مرضی ہے جو چاہو کرو۔  لہذا میں نے دوبارہ تدریس کے شعبے میں جانے کا ارادہ کر لیا اور ایف پی ایس سی کے ذریعے ملازمت کی درخواست جمع کروا دی۔

           اس زمانےمیں ذوالفقارعلی بھٹو صاحب کی حکومت تھی۔ انہوں نے اساتذہ کی مشاہیر میں اچھا بھلا اضافہ کیا۔ جہاں دیگر افسران کی تنخواہ 500 روپے تھی وہاں لیکچرار کی تنخواہ 750 روپے تھی یعنی ہر لیکچرر کو پانچ اضافی انکریمنٹ دئیے جاتے تھے۔ آپ پریشان نہ ہوں۔ جی ہاں اس وقت کے گریڈ 17 کے افسران کی ابتدائی تنخواہ صرف500 روپے ہی ہوتی تھی۔ جب میں نے  ایف پی ایس سی میں انٹرویو دیا تو انہوں نے مجھے چھے اضافی انکریمنٹ دئیے یعنی میری تنخواہ 1150 روپے سے شروع ہوئی۔ میں نے فوراً شمولیت اختیار کی اور فیڈرل گورنمنٹ کالج نمبر ۱ لیکچرار کی حیثیت سے جوائن کرلیا۔

 اس جگہ میں ٓاپ کو بتانا چاہتا ہوں کہ جو مزہ پڑھانے میں ہے وہ کسی اور پیشے میں نہیں ہے اس لئے اگر کسی کو پڑھانے کا جذبہ ہو تو ضروراس شعبے میں شمولیت اختیار کرے۔ جذبے کے بغیر نوکری ہوتی ہے تدریس نہیں۔ اس شعبے میں آج بھی %25-30 لوگ جذبے کے تحت آتے ہیں انہی کی وجہ سے یہ شعبہ چل رہا ہے ورنہ اس میں اتنی ترقی نہ ہوتی۔

           پڑھانے کے ساتھ ساتھ میں نے کوشش کی کہ مجھے بیرونِ ملک سکالر شپ مل جائے لیکن کچھ نہ ہوسکا۔ پھر اچانک 1979ء میں (سی او ٹی) اووسیز ٹریننگ اسکالر شپ کا اعلان ہوا جو اساتذہ کے لئے مختص تھا۔ اس میں ہر صوبے کا کوٹہ مقرر تھا۔ فیڈرل ایریا کے کوٹے کے لئے صرف ایک سیٹ مل سکتی تھی۔ میں نے اپنا نام بھجوا دیا۔ اللہ کا کرم ایسا ہوا کہ میں اسکالر شپ لینے میں کامیاب ہوگیا یعنی کہ میں پی ایچ ڈی کرنے کے لئے منتخب ہوگیا۔ میرا داخلہ کیمرج یونیورسٹی میں ہوا تھا مگر وہاں کچھ گھریلو وجوہات کی وجہ سے نہ جا سکا۔

 میرا داخلہ برطانیہ کی ایک اور یونیورسٹی University College of North Wales Bangor میں بھی ہوا تھا۔ اس کو میں نے جوائن کرکے کام کرنا شروع کردیا۔ جو سپروائزر مجھے ملے انکا نام ڈاکٹر عباس تھا۔ وہ اکبر آلہ آبادی کے نواسے اور بہت ہی دلچسپ اور ہمدرد انسان تھے۔ ان کے ساتھ کام شروع کیا لیکن جس مضمون میں وہ کام کروانا چاہتے تھے وہ میری پسند کا نہیں تھا اور اس میں مجھے صحیح مزہ نہیں آرہا تھا۔ چنا نچہ  میں نے خوب غور و خوص کے بعد یہ فیصلہ کیا کہ میں نے اس مضمون میں کام آگے نہیں کرنا کیونکہ مجھے اس میں بالکل دلچسپی نہیں تھی ۔ میں نے اپنے لئے خود ہی مشکل پیدا کرلی۔ اب میرے پاس دو ہی راستے تھے اوّ ل یہ کہ میں پاکستان واپس چلا جاؤ ں، دوم یہ کہ میں کسی اور یونیورسٹی میں داخلہ لے لوں ۔ چنا نچہ  میں نے فیصلہ کیا کہ میں پاکستان واپس چلا جاؤں گا مگر واپس جانے سے پہلے میں نے اپنے ایک دوست جاوید حسین زیدی جو کہ برمنگھم یونیورسٹی میں زیر تعلیم تھے  سے مشورہ لینا بہتر سمجھا۔ میں ان کے پاس گیا اور ان سے مشورہ کیا۔

 ان کے مشورے کے مطابق میں نے چار دن برمنگھم یونیورسٹی میں گزارے۔ میں مختلف ڈیپارٹمنٹ میں گیا اور پروفیسر حضرات سے ملاقات کرتا رہا۔ میں ڈیپارٹمنٹ ٓف انجنیئرینگ پروڈکشن کے شعبے میں بھی گیا۔ وہاں  لوگوں سے ملاقات ہوئی۔ یہ لوگ میری پسند کا کام کررہے تھے تو انہوں نے کہا کہ یہاں آجاؤ لیکن ابھی سمسٹر کا وسط چل رہا ہے اس لئے داخلہ اگلے سمسٹر میں ہی ہوگا۔ لہذا میں نے یونیورسٹی آف برمنگھم میں آپریشن ریسرچ میں داخلہ لیا۔ وہاں میری سب سے بڑی اچھی دوستی ہوگئی۔ یہاں سے میں نے ایم ایس سی (OR) کی ڈگری مکمل کی۔ یہ میری زندگی میں بڑا سنگ میل تھا کہ میں نے کسی ترقی یافتہ ملک سے ڈگری حاصل کرلی. ۔ اس سے مجھے بہت اعتماد ملا جو کہ ٓائندہ زندگی میں بہت کام آیا۔

پی ایچ ڈی ایک دوسرا سنگِ میل

           کیونکہ میرے ایم ایس سی میں اچھے نمبر آئے تھے اس لئے پی ایچ ڈی  میں داخلہ لینا اتنا مشکل نہ ہوا۔ میرا پی ایچ ڈی کا پہلا سال بہت اچھا گزرا۔ اس میں میں نے بہت کچھ سیکھا اور نئی چیزیں جاننے کا موقع بہت ملا لیکن اس کے بعد دوسرے سال میں میرا کام تقریباًبند ہو گیا اور میں آگے بالکل نہ بڑھ سکا، نتیجہ یہ نکلا کہ نہ پروفیسر صاحب کوئی  کام دیتے تھے اور نہ ہی میرے پاس کوئی کام تھا۔ اسکے بعد مجھے میرے پروفیسر نے ایک اور کام دیا جس میں کافی اچھا کام کیا مگر کچھ عرصہ گزارنے کے بعد یہ کام بھی بند ہوگیا۔ اس طرح انہوں نے مجھے دو سالوں میں دو مسائل دئیے لیکن میں ان کا حل نہ نکال سکا یعنی بند گلی میں آگئے۔ تیسری دفعہ انہوں نے مجھے ایک مسئلہ دیا کہ اس پر کام کرو لیکن کام کرنے کے باو جود کوئی خاطر خواہ نتیجہ نہ مل سکا۔ میں نے پروفیسر صاحب سے کہا کہ مجھ سے یہ مسئلہ حل نہ ہوسکے گاتوبتائیے میں کیا کروں؟ انہوں نے کہا کہ ہم تھیسز لکھ دیں گے کہ ہم نے تین مسائل پر کام کیا مگر ہمیں حل نہیں مل سکے اس لئے کہ یہ بھی تحقیق کا ایک حصہ ہے کہ ضروری نہیں ہر مسئلے کا حل موجود ہو۔

           بہرحال یہ دور میرے لئے بہت مشکل تھا۔اسی دوران کمپیوٹر کے علم میں اضافہ ہورہا تھا اور ڈیپارٹمنٹ نے ایک نیا پرنٹراور پلاٹر خریدا اور مجھے کہا کہ آپ اس کو ٹیسٹ کریں اور کام کرکے دیکھیں۔ یہ 1984ء کی شروع کی بات ہے۔ میں اسی پرنٹر اور پلاٹر کو ٹیسٹ کرتا رہا جو مجھے وہاں آسانی سے میسر تھا۔ اس کام کا مقصد یہ تھا کہ میں ایک رپورٹ اس پرنٹر کے بارے میں لکھوں کہ یہ کیسا پرنٹر ہے اور اسے کیسے استعمال کیا جاسکتا ہے۔ ایک دن جب میں پرنٹر پر کام کر رہا تھا تو مجھے خیال آیا کہ کیوں نہ میں اس پرنٹر/ پلاٹر کو اپنی پی ایچ ڈی کے پرابلمز میں استعمال کروں۔ جب میں نے کوشش کی تو میرا جو پہلا مسئلہ تھا وہ تقریبا حل ہوتا ہوا نظر آیا ۔چنا نچہ  میں نے پوری محنت سے کئی دن اور رات کام کیا اوربالآخر یہ مسئلہ میرے علم کے مطابق حل ہوگیا تھا۔

           کچھ دن بعد دوسرے مسئلے کو حل کرنے کی کوشش کی اس میں تھوڑی سے مشکل پیش آئی اور تھوڑی سے تک و دو کے بعدیہ مسئلہ بھی حل ہوتا ہوا نظر آیا۔ یہ1984ء  کی گرمیوں کی بات ہے۔ میرے پروفیسر صاحب چیکو سلواکیا گئے ہوئے تھے۔ اُن کی غیر موجودگی میں وہاں پر کوئی اور شخص ایسا نہ تھا جس سے میں ان معاملات پربات کرسکتا۔ اُس زمانے میں مواصلاتی نظام بھی اتنا اچھا نہ تھا کہ میں ایک طویل دورانیے کی کال اپنے پروفیسر صاحب سے کرسکوں۔ میرے پاس سوائےwait and see کے علاوہ کوئی چارہ نہ تھا۔ چنا نچہ  میں نے سوچا کہ تیسرا مسئلہ جو رکا ہوا ہے اس کی طرف دھیان دوں۔ اس پر میں نے کوئی بیس دن لگائے اور مجھے کافی کامیابی نظر آئی اور ایک اچھی صورت بنتی نظر آئی۔ پروفیسر صاحب کی غیر موجودگی کا یہ وقفہ میرے لئے بہت اچھا ثابت ہوا۔ پھر جناب پروفیسر صاحب تشریف لے آئے۔یہ جولائی کے مہینے میں اچھا اور صاف ستھرا پیر کا دن تھا۔ دھوپ نکلی ہوئی تھی۔ دن بہت بڑا تھا۔ سورج صبح 5 بجے طلوع ہوا تھا اور 9 بجے غروب ہوا تھا۔

           میں پروفیسر صاحب کے پاس گیا اور میں نے بہت مودبانہ انداز میں بڑے جھجکتے ہوئے عرض کیا کہ پروفیسر صاحب ہم جن مسائل پر کام کررہے تھے ان کے حل نکلنا شروع ہوگئے ہیں۔ پروفیسر نے حیرانی سے پوچھا کہ وہ کیسے؟ میں نے کہا کہ  آپ پلیز چیک کر لیں۔ انہوں نے مجھ سے تمام کاغذات لئے اور کہا مجھے دیکھنے اور سوچنے کا وقت دو۔ انہوں نے ایک ہفتہ لگایا اور اگلے پیر کو مجھے 11 بجے کا وقت دیا۔ میں ڈرتے ڈرتے وقت مقررہ پر پہنچا۔ انہوں نے بڑے سکون سے مجھے بٹھایا اور بڑے اچھے انداز میں کہا کہ مجھے اسکو دیکھنے کے لئے کچھ اور وقت درکار ہے لیکن آپ تھیسز (thesis) لکھنے کی تیاری کریں۔ میں نے تھیسز لکھا، جمع کروایا، defendکیا اوراللہ کے فضل سے کامیاب ہوا۔ یہ سب کام بخوبی انجام پایا۔ اس میں میرے پروفیسر کی بڑی مدد حاصل رہی۔ وہاں پر موجود ساتھیوں نے بھی میرے ساتھ بڑا تعاون کیا۔

          PhD کرنے کے فوراً بعد میں بمعہ فیملی واپس پاکستان آگیا اور H-8 کالج میں گریڈ 17 کی لیکچرار شپ شروع کردی۔ اسی دوران ایک دن اخبار کا ایک ٹکڑا میرے ہاتھ آیا جس میں ’’نیشنل سینٹر فار ٹیکنالوجی ٹرانسفر‘‘میں ڈائریکٹر کی خالی آسامیوں کا اشتہار تھا۔ ڈائریکٹر آئی ٹی کی آسامی میرے شعبے اور تعلیم کے مطابق تھی۔ میں گریڈ 17 میں تھا اور یہ گریڈ 19 کی نوکری تھی۔ میں اشتہار میں درج پتہ پر گیا ۔ڈائریکٹر جنرل شوکت بلوچ صاحب سے ملا اور اشتہار کا تذکرہ کیا۔ انہوں نے بہت حوصلہ افزائی کی اور کہا کہ ٓپ ضرور اپلائی کریں۔ کافی اصحاب نے اس پوسٹ کے لئے اپلائی کیا۔ سب کا انٹرویو ہوا اور مجھے منتخب کرلیا گیا۔ اللہ کا کرنا ایسا ہوا کہ بعد میں 1993ء میں، میں اُسی ادارے کا ڈی جی بنا۔

          یہ 1985 ء کا ذکر ہے کہ ایک دن مجھے ملائیشیا کی ایک کانفرنس میں شرکت کا دعوت نامہ ملا۔ میرا جانے کا پورا ارادہ تھا. ۔اتفاق یہ ہوا کہ جس دن جانا تھا اس سے ایک دن پہلے وہاں سے خود ہی فون آیا کہ زیدی صاحب آپ آرہے ہیں یا نہیں؟ مجھے کچھ معلوم ہی نہیں تھا کہ مجھے وہاں اپنا پیپر پیش کرنا تھا۔ اس وقت شام تھی اوردو دن کے بعد مجھے وہاں پہنچنا تھا۔ اُس زمانے میں این او سی ملنا بہت مشکل تھا پھر کلیرنس کروانا اور پھر دستاویز کی کاپی مہیا کرنا تھیں۔ بہرحال میں نے علی الصبح تمام کاغذات اکٹھے کئے۔ منسٹری سائنس وٹیکنالوجی گیا، اسٹمپ لگوائے، خط بنوائے اور این او سی کے لئےکئی دفاتر اور محکمہ جات جانا پڑا. ۔ بحرحال مجھے اسی روز این او سی مل گیا۔ پھر ٹکٹ بک کروایا۔ میرا ٹکٹ کراچی، کولمبو اور کوالالمپور کا تھا۔ میں جیسے ہی وہاں پہنچا تو میری طبیعت خراب ہوگئی لیکن خیر میں نے اپنا پیپر پیش کیا جسے کافی  ماہرین نے سراہا۔

           وہیں اسی ہوٹل میں میری ملاقات ڈاکٹر محمد نواز شریف سے ہوئی جو انڈیا کے شہر بنگلور میں UNکے ایک ادارے کے ڈائریکٹر تھے۔ انہوں نے مجھے مخاطب کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ ڈاکٹر زیدی اگر میں آپ کو نوکری کی پیشکش کروں تو کیا آپ قبول کر لیں گے؟ میں نے حیرت سے انہیں دیکھا اور کہا کہ کیا آپ کو معلوم ہے آپ کیا کہہ رہے ہیں؟ مجھے انڈین مار دیں گے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ نہیں آپ اس کی فکر نہ کریں ہم آپ کو اقوام متحدہ کی حفاظت فراہم کریں گے۔ میں نے سوچا یہ تو ناممکن سی بات ہے اس طرح نہ تو مجھے حکومت پاکستان چھوڑے گی اور نہ ہی بھارتی حکومت لے گی۔ بہرحال میں نے شریف صاحب سے ایک گھنٹہ بات کی اور انہوں نے مجھے اس جاب کے بارے میں بریفنگ دی۔

           میرے پاکستان پہنچنے پر آفر مل چکی تھی ۔حکومت پاکستان کی منظوری درکار تھی اور بھارت سرکار کی اجازت۔ اس وقت جونیجو صاحب کی حکومت تھی ۔بہرحال NOC لینے میں سات ماہ لگے۔ یہاں ہر کسی کو میری حفاظت کی فکر تھی۔ دہلی میں اگرچہ بہت سے پاکستانی کام کرتے تھے مگر بنگلور میں کوئی بھی پاکستانی نہ تھا۔ جونیجو صاحب کے ساتھ میرا براہ راست تبادلہ خیال ہوا۔ انہوں نے مجھ سے یہی سوال کیا کہ تم کیوں جانا چاہتے ہو اور بچوں کو کیوں لے کر جا رہے ہو؟ میں نے کہا کہ میرے شروع سے ہی دو تجسس تھے ایک یہ کہ انگلستان جا ؤں اور دیکھوں کہ جن لوگوں نے دو سو سال ہم پر حکومت کی ان میں کیا باتیں ہیں اور دوسرا یہ کہ ہمارے دشمن کیسے ہیں؟ میں اس بات کو سمجھنے کے لئے جانا چاہتا ہوں۔ اس بات سے وہ متاثر ہوئے اور نیک تمنائوں کے ساتھ رخصت کیا۔ چنا نچہ  مجھے اجازت مل گئی۔

 انگلینڈ میں رہ کرمیں نے یہ جانا کہ گورا کبھی یہ نہیں بتاتا کہ اس کے دل میں کیا ہے۔ وہ بہت سوچ سمجھ کر بات کرتاہے اور جذباتی بالکل نہیں ہوتا۔ ان کے پاس ایموشنز نام کی کوئی چیز نہیں ہوتی۔ ان سے کام نکلوانا اتنا آسان نہیں ہے۔ انہوں نے آدھی دنیا پر حکومت ایسے ہی نہیں کی ۔ کافی سوچ سمجھ کر کی ہے اور دوسری بات یہ کہ وہ بڑا بے رحم ہوتا ہے۔ وہ ماں، باپ، بہن، بھائی کسی کے ساتھ کوئی مروت یا لحاظ نہیں رکھتا۔ ہم مسلمان پھر بھی لحاظ کرتے ہیں۔ اسی طرح ہندو بہت چالاک ہوتا ہے۔ جتنا وہ میٹھا بنتا ہے شاید ہی وہ ویسا ہو۔ اب میں یہ سوچتا ہوں کہ ہمیں ان سے بہت چالاکی اور ہوشیاری سے دوستی رکھنی چاہئے اور وہ جو کھیل کھیل رہے ہیں ان کو اسی میں ہرانا چاہئے۔

بنگلور میں خدمات ایک اور سنگِ میل

          1987ء میں بنگلور پہنچا اور تقریباً چار سال وہاں گزارے۔ میں جس ادارے میں کام کر رہا تھا یہ ایک اقوام متحدہ کا Asian and Pacific Center for Transfer of Technology (APCTT) تھا ۔ میں اس وقت ایڈوائزر ٹیکنالوجی انفارمیشن تھا اور میں کوئی 54 ممالک بشمول پاکستان  کے لئے کام کرتا تھا۔ اس زمانے میں آئی ٹی وہاں متعارف ہو رہا تھا اور نئی نئی کمپنیاں کام کے لئے آرہی تھیں۔ بنگلور اس وقت ایک صاف ستھرا اور بہت ہرا بھرا شہر تھا۔ اس وقت بہت سارے فلمی ستاروں نے بنگلور میں اپنی رہائش گاہیں بنائیں۔ اسکو اس وقت گارڈن سٹی بھی کہا جاتا تھا۔ بنگلور میں گرمی کے موسم میں گرمی نہیں ہوتی تھی اور پنکھے کی ضرورت نہیں پڑتی تھی ۔سردی میں بھی کسی ہیٹر کی ضرورت نہیں پڑتی تھی۔ اس لئے اکثر لوگ اسکو ائیر کنڈیشنڈ سٹی بھی کہتے تھے۔

          بنگلور کے قریب ہی میسور کا شہر ہے جو کہ ٹیپوسلطان کی وجہ سے مشہور ہے۔ ٹیپو سلطان نے انگریزوں کے خلاف جنگ آزادی لڑی اور شہادت پائی۔ ان کا مزار بھی وہیں پر ہے ۔ اس جگہ کو سری رنگا پٹنہ بھی کہتے ہیں۔ ٹیپو سلطان کو اپنے غدار ساتھیوں کی وجہ سے شکست ہوئی۔ میسوربھی بہت اچھا شہر ہے۔وہاں پر بعد کے حکمران راجاؤں کے بہت سارے محلات بھی ہیں۔

          بنگلور اب آئی ٹی کاحب بن گیا ہے اور آئی ٹی کی  تقریباً تمام مشہور کمپنیاں وہاں پر موجود ہیں۔ مجھے 1991ء کے بعد بنگلور جانے کا اتفاق نہیں ہوا تو میں یقین سے نہیں کہہ سکتا کہ وہ اب کیسا شہر ہے۔

          ایک اور اہم بات یہ ہےکہ بنگلور میں ، میں جس ادارہ میں کام کررہا تھا وہ اقوام متحدہ کا ریجنل سنٹر تھا جسکا پاکستان بھی رُکن تھا اور ہے۔ چنا نچہ  اسکی میٹنگز، جو کہ زیادہ تر بنکاک میں ہوتی تھیں، میں شرکت کے لئے پاکستان سے منسٹری آف سائنس اور ٹیکنالوجی کے سیکرٹری آیا کرتے تھے۔ میں نے اس وقت کے سیکرٹری جناب طارق مصطفی کو اس ادارے کو وزٹ کرنے کی دعوت دی جو انہوں نے قبول کی اور وہ بمعہ اپنی اہلیہ کے بنگلور تشریف لائے۔ اُن کو بنگلور شہر اور ہمارے ادارہ کا کام بہت پسند آیا ۔ اور انھوں نے اپنی قیمتی آرا  سے بھی نوازا۔ یہ بھی بتاتا چلوں کہ  یہ وہی طارق مصطفی صاحب ہیں جنکے نام پر فیصل آباد کے قریب ایک علاقہ طارق آباد ہے اور انہوں نے ہی انجنئیرکےطور پے پہلا پاکستانی راکٹ خلا ء میں بھیجا تھا۔

          میں نے اس ادارے میں تقریباً چار سال کام کیا اور اپنی اسائنمنٹ مکمل کرکے فروری1991ء میں پاکستان واپس آگیا۔ یہ میرے لئے بہت اچھا تجربہ تھا مگر میرا قیام بڑا مشکل تھا۔ آپ سمجھ سکتے ہیں کہ ایک پاکستانی کا انڈیا میں کام کرنا کیسا ہوگا۔ تھوڑے عرصے کے لئے جانا تو ٹھیک لگتا ہے مگر چار سال وہاں رہنا مشکل ہے۔ بنگلور اور Southern India کے دوسرےحصےکے لوگ بھی بڑے پڑھے لکھے اور کھلے دماغ کے ہیں۔ بنگلور شہر میں تعلیم کے اور تحقیق کے کافی ادارے ہیں۔ 1930ء میں یہاں کے ایک سائنسدان C.V. Raman کو نوبل پرائز ملا جو کہ ایشیاء کا پہلا نوبل پرائز تھا۔ انکے نام سے مشہور Raman Effect فزکس کی اہم دریافت ہے۔

          بنگلور کے گرد و نواح میں مدراس (آجکل Chennai) کنہیا کماری اور کوچن جیسے اچھے شہر آباد ہیں۔ کنہیا کماری ایک ایسی خاص جگہ ہے جہاں پر تین سمندربحر ہند، بحیرہ بنگال اور بحیرہ عرب ملتے ہیں۔ یہاں آپ سورج کو سمندر سے طلوع اور غروب ہوتے ہوئے بھی دیکھ سکتے ہیں۔ بنگلور کے قریب بہت اچھے چائے کے باغات بھی ہیں ۔South میں ناریل اور پپیتا بہت اچھا اور وافر مقدار میں ملتا ہے وہاں کھانے بھی زیادہ تر ناریل کے ہوتے ہیں۔ 1991ء میں ، میں اپنی اسائنمنٹ مکمل کرکے واپس آیا اور NCTT دوبارہ جوائن کرلیا۔ میں ڈاکٹر شوکت بلوچ کے ماتحت کام کرتا رہا جن کا1993ء  میں قومی شاہراہ پر ایک کار حادثہ میں انتقال ہوگیا۔ یہ ایک المیہ اور قومی نقصان تھا۔ بلوچ صاحب ایک قابل اور تجربہ کار شخص تھے۔ انکے انتقال کے بعد مجھے اس ادارہ کے ڈائریکٹر جنرل کی ذمہ داری دے دی گئی۔

           میں نے اس ادارے میں کچھ عرصہ ہی کام کیا تھا کہ ادارہ  Economy Commission کی زد میں آگیا۔ اس طرح ہم لوگوں کو وزارت سائنس وٹیکنالوجی میں بھیج دیا گیا۔ مجھے پاکستان کونسل فار سائنس اینڈ ٹیکنالوجی کا سیکرٹری (BPS-20) بنا دیا۔ مجھے یہاں deputy director کے عہدے پر فائز کردیا گیا۔

           یہ 1998ء کی بات ہے میرے پاس چئیرمین بننے کے مواقع موجود تھے جو گریڈ 22 کی پوسٹ تھی۔ انہی دنوں کامسیٹس کی بنیاد رکھی جا رہی تھی۔ یہ ایک بین الاسرکار ادارہ تھا جو ڈاکٹر عبدالسلام نے تجویز کیا تھا تاکہ ممبر ممالک آپس میں سائنس و ٹیکنالوجی میں تعاون کر کے آگے بڑھیں اور اس کے لئے ترقی یافتہ ملکوں پر انحصار کم کریں۔

           کامسیٹس ((COMSATS 1994ء میں معرض وجود میں آیا اور 1996ء میں یہاں پر ایک منصوبہ بنا کہ پاکستان میں انٹرنیٹ لگایا جائے۔ پرویز بٹ صاحب، جو کہ اس وقت کامسیٹس کے executive director تھے، نے مجھے کہا کہ پی سی ایس ٹی چھوڑ کر یہاں ہی آ جاؤ لیکن مجھے پی سی ایس ٹی سے اجازت نہیں ملی اور عندیہ دیا گیا کہ مجھے وہیں رہنا چاہئے تا کہ اگلے چئیرمین آپ ہوں گے لیکن میں انٹرنیٹ پراجیکٹ پر غیر رسمی طور پرکام کرتا رہا۔

          جب ہم انٹرنیٹ لگا رہے تھے تو بتایا گیا کہ اس کے لئے ہمارے پاس لوگ نہیں ہیں اس لئے ہمیں دوبئی سے ماہر کو بلوانا پڑا۔ ہمیں اندازہ ہوا کہ آئی ٹی کے شعبے میں ماہرین کی بہت کمی ہے ۔ لہذا یہ طے پایا کہ کامسیٹس میں انفارمیشن ٹیکنالوجی کی تعلیم دی جائے گی اور آئی ٹی کی تعلیم کے لئے ایک ادارہ بنایا جائے گا ۔ یہ منصوبہ بن گیا مگر کامسیٹس کے منصوبے پر کام کرنے والوں نے کہا کہ اس پر عمل پیرا ہونے کے لئے آپ کو خود آنا پڑے گا۔ میں نے اپنے سیکرٹری سے کہا کہ میں یہ جاب بدلنا چاہتا ہوں جس پر انہوں نے کہا کہ آپ سرکاری نوکری کیوں چھوڑ رہے ہیں؟ میں نے کہا کہ بس میں رسک لینا چاہتا ہوں اور سچ یہ ہے کہ جہاں میں کام کر رہا ہوں یہاں میں کسی کو رکھ نہیں سکتا اور نہ ہی کسی کو نکال سکتا ہوں اور جو لوگ موجود ہیں ان سے کام نہیں لے سکتا اس لئے مجھے کامسیٹس جانے کی اجازت دی جائے جو مل گئی لہذا میں نے اس طرح سے کامسیٹس میں شمولیت اختیار کر لی۔

یہ 1998ء کی بات ہے۔ تنخواہ کے ہمراہ گاڑی اور دیگر سہولیات بھی دی گئیں۔ اس کے بعد ہم نے ادارے کے لئے جگہ دیکھنا شروع کی۔ اس سلسلے میں کیپٹن عیسانی صاحب نے بہت تعاون کیا۔ وہ اس زمانے میں یو جی سی (then University Grants Commission and now Higher Education Commission) کے سربراہ تھے اور انہوں نے ہمیں ایک جگہ دے دی۔ اگر اس دن بٹ صاحب عیسانی صاحب سے بات نہ کرتے تو شایدآج کامسیٹس کا وجود نہ ہوتا ۔ پھر اچانک ہمیں معلوم ہوا کہ پرویز بٹ صاحب کامسیٹس سے جارہے ہیں ۔یہ ہمارے لئے اچھی بات نہ تھی ۔ ہم لوگ ایک اچھے سربراہ اور رفیق ساتھی سے محروم ہوگئے۔ پرویز بٹ صاحب کے بعد کچھ عرصہ میں نے وہاں بحیثیت ایگزیکٹو ڈائریکٹر کام کیا۔ پھر ڈاکٹر حمید احمد خان صاحب کی تقرری ہوگئی۔

           1999ء میں پرویز مشرف صاحب کا دور شروع ہوا ۔ دسمبر1999ء میں انہوں نے ایک دفعہ مجھے اپنے آفس میں بلایا ۔ کچھ رسمی جملوں کی ادائیگی بعد انہوں نے مجھ سے پوچھا کہ میں تعلیم کے فروغ کے لئے کیا کر سکتا ہوں۔ میں نے انہیں بتایا کہ پاکستان میں یونیورسٹیاں بہت کم ہیں اور یونیورسٹی بنانا بہت مشکل کام ہے۔ ہم ایک سال سے کوشش کر رہے ہیں لیکن چارٹر حاصل نہیں کرسکے ۔چارٹر بہت بڑا مسئلہ ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ہم آزادانہ طور پر چارٹر دیں گے۔

           بالآخر 2000ء میں ڈاکٹر عطاء الرحمان صاحب جو اس وقت تک سنٹر آف سائنس اینڈ ٹیکنالوجی  کے سربراہ بن چکے تھے اور جاوید مسعود صاحب جو کہ اس وقت منسٹری آف سائنس اینڈ ٹیکنالوجی کے سیکرٹری تھے کی محنت سے کامسیٹس کو ایک degree awarding institute کا چارٹر مل گیا اور یہ ایک تسلیم شدہ ادارہ بن گیا۔ ہم نے H-8 میں محدود سی جگہ پر کام شروع کردیا۔ پہلے سال ہمارے پاس 350 طلبا ت نے داخلہ لیا۔ اس کے بعد یہ سلسلہ چل نکلا ۔آج بہت سے ڈگری پروگرامز کے ساتھ تقریباً پینتیس ہزار طلبا وطالبات زیرِ تعلیم ہیں۔

           پہلے پہل ہم نے باقاعدہ کلاسز کا آغاز سر سید میموریل سوسا ئٹی کی عمارت سے کیا۔ ایک دن ملک کے چیف ایگزیکٹوجنرل پرویز مشرف صاحب تشریف لائے۔ انہیں ایک افتتاحی تقریب کے لئے مدعو کیا گیا تھا۔ ان کے ساتھ بات چیت کے دوران انہیں بتایا کہ ہمارے پاس جگہ نہیں ہے اور ہمیں کیمپس کے لئے زمین چاہئے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ Capital Development Authority (CDA) میری بات نہیں سنتا اس لئے میں کچھ نہیں کر سکتا۔ ہاں البتہ میں آپ کو ایبٹ آباد میں زمین دلواتا ہوں ۔آپ وہاں یونیورسٹی قائم کر لیں۔ وہ یہ کہہ کر چلے گئے۔

           چند دن کے بعد انکے آفس سے فون آیا اور مجھے بتایا گیا کہ ایبٹ آباد میں یونیورسٹی کی تعمیر شروع کرنی ہے ۔ساتھ ہی کلاسز شروع کرنے کی تاریخ بھی دے دی گئی۔ فوج نے زمین دی اور حکومت نے چالیس ملین رپوں کا منصوبہ بھی منظور کرلیا۔

           ہم نے ابھی تعمیر شروع ہی کی تھی کہ پاکستان آرڈیننس فیکٹری (POF) کے چئیرمین جناب عبدالقیوم صاحب نے سفارش پیش کی کہ کامسیٹس کا ایک کیمپس واہ میں بھی ہونا چاہئے۔ بعد اذاں انہوں نے ہماری مالی مدد کی اور جگہ بھی دی۔ اس طرح ہم نے واہ میں بھی ایک کیمپس بنا دیا۔ لاہور میں ایک ٹیکنالوجی انسٹیٹیوٹ کی عمارت بالکل بیکار پڑی تھی تو ہم نے اسے کامسیٹس کا کیمپس بنانے کے لئے حکومت پنجاب سے معاہدہ کیا۔ اس کے لئے بھی حکومت پاکستان نے ایک منصوبہ کی منظوری دی ۔ جلد ہی طلبا نے اس میں پڑھائی شروع کر دی۔ اسی طرح ساہیوال سے تعلق رکھنےوالے منسٹرسائنس اور ٹیکنالوجی چوہدری نوریز شکور نے کہا کہ ایک کیمپس ان کے شہر میں بھی ہونا چاہئے۔ انہوں نے ہمیں زمین بھی دلوائی اور مالی معاونت کے لئے گورنمنٹ سے ایک منصوبہ بھی منظورکروادیا۔ اس طرح ساہیوال میں بھی ایک کیمپس بنا دیا گیا۔ جو ہمارے اچھے کیمپسس میں سے ایک ہے۔

          ان کے بعد سائنس اور ٹیکنالوجی کی وزیر محترمہ تہمینہ دولتانہ نے بھی کہا کہ ان کو وہاڑی میں بھی کامسیٹس کا ایک کیمپس چاہئے ۔ بعد میں انہوں نے کوشش کرکے ہمیں حکومت پنجاب سے کافی جگہ دلوا ئی اور حکومت پاکستان سے ایک منصوبہ کی منظوری بھی کروائی جس سے ہمیں کیمپس بنانے کے لئے مالی امداد مل گئی۔

           اس طرح ان لوگوں کے تعاون سے اس وقت ہمارے سات کیمپس واہ، اٹک، اسلام آباد، لاہور، ساہیو ال، وہاڑی اور ایبٹ آباد میں کامیابی سے کام کر رہے ہیں۔ ہم نے تین مضامین سے کام شروع کیا تھا اور اب 94 مضامین پڑھا رہے ہیں ۔ تقریباً 38,000 طلبا ہیں ۔ سب سے اچھی اور قابل تعریف بات یہ ہے کہ کامسیٹس کے پاس تقریباً 1,200 پی ایچ ڈی فیکلٹی ممبرز ہیں جو کہ کسی بھی پاکستانی یونیورسٹی میں سب سے زیادہ ہیں۔ کامسیٹس اچھے اور لائق اساتذہ کوسکالر شپ بھی دیتا ہے۔

          میں نے کامسیٹس میں 1999ء سے لے کر 2017ء تک ریکٹر کی حیثیت سے کام کیا۔ اسی دوران کامسیٹس کے ایگزیکٹو ڈائریکٹر کی پوسٹ خالی ہوئی۔ یہ وہ جگہ ہے جہاں سے میں نے اس سارے سفر کا آغاز کیا تھا۔ میری سلیکشن ہوگئی اور میں نے ایگزیکٹو ڈائریکٹر کی حیثیت سے یہاں دوبارہ کام شروع کر دیا۔ اب میں وہیں ہوتا ہوں۔

          آپ کو یہ جان کر خوشی ہوگی کہ مجھے زندگی میں کبھی کسی کی سفارش کی ضرورت نہیں پڑی۔ اللہ کے فضل سے 1993ء سے لے کر اب تک مجھے سینئر پوسٹ پر ہی رکھا گیا۔ اللہ پاک کا شکر ہے کہ ہمیشہ بہت سادہ زندگی گزاری۔ انگلینڈ سے واپسی پر میرے پروفیسر صاحب نے مجھے ایک خط دیا جسے میں نے پاکستان آ کر کھولا ۔ اس میں انہوں نے مجھے ایک اچھی ملازمت کی پیشکش کی تھی مگر میں پاکستان میں کام کرنا چاہتا تھا۔ آپ کو پتہ ہی ہوگا کہ انٹیل نام کی ایک کمپنی کمپیوٹر پروسیسر بناتی ہے. ۔اس نے نیا پروسیسر 286 میرے الجبرا کا استعمال کرکے بنایا ۔ یہ الجبرا میرا پی ایچ ڈی کا کام تھا۔ انہوں نے مجھ سے رجوع کیا اور کہا کہ ہمارے پاس ہمیشہ ہی آپ کے لئے نوکری ہوگی۔ آپ جب چاہیں ہمارے پاس آجائیں۔ یہ 1996ء کی بات ہے۔ میں یہ بات فخر سے کہہ سکتا ہوں کہ میری ایسی شراکتیں ہیں جو مجھے کبھی نہیں بھولیں گی۔ جن میں ایک تو پروسیسر 286 ہے جسکی وجہ سے کمپیوٹر کی دنیا میں تبدیلی آئی۔ دوسرا یہ کہ جب شروع میں انٹر نیٹ بن رہا تھا تو آرپانیٹ کے ساتھ میں نے کام کیا ۔ اس وقت جو لوگ اسے بنا رہے تھے ان کا تعلق فرانس، امریکہ اور انگلستان سے تھا۔ ہم نے اُس پر بہت کام کیا اور پھر اُسے پاکستان میں متعارف کروایا۔

سماجی زندگی اور حالات

           میری بیوی بہت متحمل مزاج ہیں اور ہماری زندگی بہت سادہ اور آسان رہی۔ وہ بہت اچھے خاندان سے تعلق رکھتی ہیں۔ اُن کی والدہ زبیدہ خاتون اور ان کی نانی اے آر خاتون مشہور ناول نگار تھیں۔ انہوں نے گھر کو بڑے سلیقہ سے سنبھالا اور ہمیشہ ساتھ بھی دیا. جب میںPhD  کررہا تھا تواُنھوں نے مناسب مشورے بھی دئیے۔ خاص طور پر پڑھائی کے معاملے میں ہمیشہ حوصلہ بڑھایا۔PhD  کے دوران مجھے بحرین میں بہت اچھی نوکری کی پیشکش ہوئی لیکن انہوں نے کہا کہ نوکریاں تو آتی رہتی ہیں آپ PhD مکمل کریں ۔ بعد ازاں یہ تعلیم میری زندگی میں اہم سنگِ میل ثابت ہوئی۔ انہوں نے کبھی زیور یا کسی چیز کی فرمائش نہیں کی۔ ہماری شادی 1978ء میں ہوئی اور ماشاء اللہ تین بچے ہیں ۔ ایک بیٹا اور دو بیٹیاں ۔ بیٹا بڑا ہے ۔ اُس کی شادی ہو چکی ہے اور اس کے بھی ماشاء اللہ تین بچے ہیں۔وہ انگلستان میں رہتا ہے۔ بڑی بیٹی کی شادی نہیں ہوئی۔ اس نےMBA, BBA اور ہسٹری میں ایم فل کیا ہے۔ سب سے چھوٹی بیٹی آرکیٹکٹ ہے۔ اُس نےNUST  یونیورسٹی کا ہال ڈیزائن کیا ہے۔ وہ شادی شدہ ہے۔ اُس کا شوہرHuawei میں انجنئیر ہے ۔ ان کا ایک بیٹا بھی ہے۔ اللہ پاک کا بڑا کرم ہے۔

سائنس وٹیکنالوجی کا پاکستان میں مستقبل

          پاکستان میں سائنس کو فوقیت نہیں دی جارہی ۔اس طرح انجینرنگ کے شعبے کو بھی وہ توجہ حاصل نہیں جس کی ہمیں ضرورت ہے۔ یہی وجہ ہے کہ ہم اس شعبے میں کارکردگی نہیں دکھا پا رہے وزیر اعظم نے گھر بنانے کا وعدہ تو کر لیا مگر ان کو چاہئے کہ اس کی جگہ روزگار کے مواقع بھی لوگوں کو فراہم کریں تاکہ لوگ یہاں اپنی خدمات سرانجام دیں اور انہیں روزگار کے لئے ملک سے باہر  جانے کی ضرورت نہ پڑے۔ ہمیں سائنس وٹیکنالوجی میں کافی سرمایہ کاری کرنی پڑے گی۔ ٹیکنالوجی سے فائدہ اٹھانا چاہئے۔ امریکہ میں ایسی بہت سی کمپنیاں ہیں جو ہم پاکستانیوں کو لینا چاہتی ہیں ۔اس لئے ہمیں تربیت یافتہ افراد تیار کرنے چاہئیں اور انہیں بہتر کام کے مواقع کا انتخاب کرنے میں مدد دینی چاہئے۔

کامیاب زندگی کے چند گُر

          انسان کو جو مل جائے اس پر شکر کرنا چاہئے اور پھر صبر بھی کرنا چاہئے۔ مجھے کسی چیز کا افسوس یا پچھتاوا نہیں ہے ۔  میں پی اے ایف میں جانا چاہتا تھا مگر نہ جا سکا ۔ زندگی میں اتنی چیزیں دیکھ لی، اتنے ممالک کا سفر کیا اور اللہ کے فضل وکرم سے ہر کام بخوبی انجام دیا۔ میں نے سی ایس ایس کا دوبار امتحان دیا ۔دوسری بار پوزیشن بھی آئی لیکن ایک بار فیصلہ کیا کہ یہاں کام نہیں کرنا تو نہیں کیا۔ جو پیچھے رہ جائے اسے چھوڑ دیں اور زیادہ سوچیں مت۔

          آدمی کو ہمیشہ جوش و ہوش سے کام کرنا چاہئے۔ دفاتر میں بھی سب کو غصہ برداشت کرنا چاہئے۔ مجھے آخری بار 2006ء میں غصہ آیا ۔ شکر ہے اللہ پاک نے ہمیشہ ساتھ دیا اور بہت عزت دی۔

          میرے والد صاحب میری زندگی کے سب سے زیادہ بااثر شخصیت ہیں ۔ وہ بڑے اچھے کردار کے مالک تھے۔ ان کو غصہ بہت آتا تھا لیکن ہماری باتیں بہت غور سے سنتے تھے۔ میں ان کا کردار اور شخصیت شروع سے ہی اپنانا چاہتا تھا۔ ہماری عادتیں تھوڑی مختلف تھیں۔ جیسے مجھ میں برداشت بہت زیادہ ہے وہ نہیں کرتے تھے۔ اُن کے جو اصول ہوتے تھے اُن کے مطابق ہی چلنا پڑتا تھا۔

           اسی طرح پرویز بٹ صاحب جو میرے سیکرٹری تھے، میں نے اُن سے بہت کچھ سیکھا۔ وہ دفتر کے کام آسانی سے مکمل کر کے تین بجے چھٹی کر لیتے تھے۔ اپنا کام وقت پر نبٹا لیتے تھے ۔بہت تحمل مزاج آدمی تھے۔ ایک دن وزیراعظم بے نظیر بھٹو صاحبہ کی کال آئی لیکن وہ دفتر میں نہیں تھے۔دفتر میں تھرتھلی مچی ہوئی تھی۔ جب واپس آئے تو بڑے سکون سے اُن کو فون کیا۔ گھبرائے بالکل نہیں۔ یہ ہمت اور برداشت میں نے ان ہی سے سیکھی۔ ایک اور شخصیت لیفٹیننٹ جنرل جاوید اشرف قاضی صاحب کی ہے۔ جس طرح وہ اپنی میز کو صاف رکھتے تھے وہ قابلِ دید تھا۔ میں نے ان سے کام کو روز کے روز سمیٹنا سیکھا۔ اسی طرح جاوید مسعود صاحب جو سیکرٹری تھے ان میں یہ خاص بات تھی کہ وہ خوب تیاری کر کے میٹنگز میں جاتے تھے۔ سب کچھ ایجنڈا تیار ہوتا تھا۔ اُن کا کہنا تھا کہ فائل اُٹھا کر یہاں رکھ دو، وہاں رکھ دو، غسل خانے میں رکھ دو۔ میٹنگز میں ان کی پریزنٹیشن قابل دید ہوتی تھی۔ تمباکو نوشی بہت کرتے تھے۔ ایک اور شخصیت جنھیں میں بغور دیکھتا تھا وہ میرے ایم ایس سی کے استاد عزیز محمود زیدی تھے۔ وہ بڑے نفیس آدمی تھے۔ اُن کی لکھائی بہت اچھی تھی اور وہ خود بھی بہت صفائی پسند تھے۔ اُن کا لہجہ بہت نرم تھا۔ انہیں دیکھ کر میں نے اپنی لکھائی اور طور طریقے بدلے۔وہ گارڈن کالج کے پرنسپل بھی رہے۔ اُن کا اور اُن کے تمام گھر والوں کا گاڑی کے ایک حادثے میں انتقال ہو گیا ۔

شوق، مشاغل اور دلچسپیاں

          اب رہی بات شوق کی تو مجھے کھیل کا بہت شوق تھا۔ اب بھی دیکھتا ہوں۔ میں بیڈمینٹن اورکرکٹ بڑے شوق سے کھیلتا  تھا اور شاید یہی وجہ تھی کہ میٹرک میں، میں بہت اچھی کارکردگی نہ دکھا سکا۔ یونیورسٹی تک پڑھائی کی مگر کھیل اس طرح نہیں کھیلا۔ آج کل پڑھنے کا بہت شوق ہے۔روزانہ دو تین گھنٹے مطالعہ ضرور کرتا ہوں۔

اختتامیہ

          محترم جناب ڈاکٹر سید محمد جنید زیدی صاحب (ستارہ امتیاز، ھلالِ امتیاز) کی زندگی کے نشیب وفراز ایک داستانِ جدوجہد مسلسل ہے۔ اُنہوں نے اپنی ناکامیوں، کوتاہیوں اور کامیابیوں کو جس انداز سے بیان کیا وہ قارئین کرام اور خصوصاً نوجوان نسل کو ضرور ایک نیا ولولہ عطا کرے گی۔ یقیناً ایک عظیم شخصیت ایک دن میں نہیں بنتی۔ یہ ان ہی کی ہمت تھی کہ کامسیٹس کو شروع کرکے ایک اعلیٰ پائے کا ادارہ بنایا جس کی شہرت پاکستان کے ساتھ ساتھ بیرون ملک میں بھی ہے۔جیسے انگریزی میں کہتے ہیں کہ “from nowhere to everywhere” ۔ 1998ء میں کامسیٹس یونیورسٹی کا نام بھی نہیں تھا مگر آج اللہ کے فضل سے یہ ادارہ ملک کی پانچ اعلیٰ درسگاہوں میں  سےایک ہے۔ اس کے اساتذہ اعلیٰ تعلیم یافتہ ہیں اور اس کے فارغ التحصیل طلبہ enterpreneurs بن کر اپنا بزنس کر رہے ہیں اور ملک کی خدمت کررہے ہیں۔ ہر سال کامسیٹس کے سات کیمپسز سے 10 ہزار طلبہ فارغ التحصیل ہوتے ہیں۔

          رَبِّ باری تعالیٰ کی رحمت اور بہت سے لوگوں سے حاصل کردہ تعلیم وتجربہ مسلسل لگن اور کوشش سے ہی ایسے لوگ جنم لیتے ہیں جو دوسروں کے لئے نا صرف روشنی کا مینار ہوتے ہیں بلکہ زندگی کو چلانے، روزگار مہیا کرنے اور حوصلے سے زندگی گزارنے کا جذبہ عطا کرتے ہیں،جن کی نرمی سے شخصیات ایسی نکھرتی ہیں جس طرح نرم??? سے تناور درخت بنتے ہیں اور جن کی سختی سے ایسی جِلا ملتی ہے جیسے پہاڑ اپنے اندر خزانے سموئے ہوئے ہوتے ہیں۔ شاعر نے کیا خوب کہا ہے کہ

؎ بڑی مشکل سے ہوتا ہے چمن میں دیدہ وَر پیدا

Dr. Syed Muhammad Junaid Zaidi

Whenever I look around, I generally see good things everywhere. Pakistan is not as bad as the news channels show us every day. Things are very different on the ground if seen positively.

I vividly remember the courageous response of the residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the havoc caused by floods six or seven years ago. As the waters receded and the clean-up and rehabilitation efforts began, I, along with my team, visited a village in Nowshera district where the calamity had turned lives upside down, to provide assistance. Though ruined, the people showed remarkable strength and resilience and exceptional hospitality. We came across an elderly man sitting next to his destroyed house. He received us with a gentle smile but what pleasantly surprised us was his apology for not serving us food. He requested us to return a month later to be his guest at his rebuilt house. Believe me, this spirit is our real strength to move forward.

When I look back at my childhood, they were good days. Memories from the early days I spent in Karachi and Rawalpindi are my most cherished possessions. I was born in Rawalpindi in 1949. During those times, the women used to return to the homes of their parents during the last months of pregnancy for care and delivery. My maternal grandmother lived in the garrison city, so my mother came to her heavily pregnant. She stayed there for a few months and took children, including the new-born me, back to Karachi to join my father, Syed Muhammad Zubair Zaidi, who was a government employee. They had got married in Sukkur.

I was the eldest of three siblings. All of them except a sister were born in Rawalpindi. I had a strict upbringing. My mother was a devout Muslim, who would wake me up before dawn to offer Fajr prayers and recite the Holy Qur’an. She’d an uncompromising viewpoint about starting the day with the name of Allah, which later became my lifelong habit.

My parents used to fight over for what I should go first, the Holy Qur’an or formal education. My mother favoured the Nazra Qur’an (Qur’an recitation course) but Abu (Father) advocated the school. I finished Nazra in a local mosque and revised it at home and then my mother asked my father to put me in school. I was taught three subjects, including English, science and mathematics, at home and was enrolled in a local school as a fifth-grader in 1957. We lived in our own house in Pak Colony in Karachi. There was no electric supply, so I used to study in the light of a lantern at night. Pakistan had yet not started television transmissions. Radio Pakistan was there but only a few people had radio sets. Our family wasn’t among them.

In October 1958, military leader General Ayub Khan invoked martial law in the country and formed a commission to select a suitable place near Rawalpindi for the national capital. Though he advocated the area behind Margalla hills near Abbottabad district towards the north, the commission settled on a location, to be called Islamabad, at the foot of the hills. As the necessary development work had to be completed in the new capital, the staff members and goods of key divisions and ministries, including the Cabinet Division, were temporarily shifted to the adjoining Rawalpindi from Karachi by train within a year. The exercise was carried out by eight trains.

Only a few ministries, including the defence, continued to function in Karachi. The government converted military barracks into houses for newly-arrived employees from Knot Lines to Robert Lines in the Westridge area and Palmer Lines near Saddar shifted the military personnel to Kharian and declared the area the cantonment, rented houses for senior officers in the Satellite Town, and established offices, schools and dispensaries.

My father was transferred from Karachi to Rawalpindi, so we all moved there. Rawalpindi used to be a nice, small cantonment area and no one had the slightest idea at that time that the country’s future capital would emerge in its neighbourhood and the region would become central to the country’s political, economic and security decision-making.

I still remember that in 1959, when I was 10, The Mall in Rawalpindi’s cantonment area was sprayed with water and sprinkled with limestone every evening in the summer. The city had the similar buses, which ply across England even today. The bus would arrive at the designated stop on time with the people already queued up to ride it, and the conductor would disclose how many to hop on. The others in the queue would wait until the next bus arrived. The interval between buses was 15-20 minutes. Tongas, horse-drawn carriages, were common but a handful of taxicabs could also be seen on the roads.

Offices used to open at 7:15am and close by 2:15pm in the summer, while the winter timings were 7:30am-2:30pm. People used to nap after reaching home. Military officers streamed out of the General Headquarters pedalling bicycles to their homes. That sight was really fascinating for me. The roads had just a few vehicles. There were only Volkswagen Beetle cars, popularly known as Foxy, which carried a price tag of Rs6,000. People mostly used Vespa scooters for conveyance. The scooter was about Rs1,100 and the price doubled afterwards.

Parents used to gift wristwatches to their children on matriculation. The Swiss Roamer RW watch was considered a valuable gift. It was smuggled into the country from Afghanistan via Landi Kotal area and priced at around Rs100, the Swiss Roamer RW watch was considered a valuable gift. I had grown fond of wristwatches over the years but had none. My father also had a liking for watches and used the Western company’s watches. A chain hanging out of the railway guard’s pocket and attached to a watch held a fascination for him.

As there was a lack of outdoor recreational areas, our Abu (Father) used to take me and my younger sister to the railway station at around 5pm to have samosa chaat, a satisfying street snack. Comprising two samosas and served with chutney in a stainless steel plate, it cost one anna (six paisas of today). It was good fun. Like other children, I used to stand along the railway track to keenly watch the Tezgam train come in from Karachi. It would always arrive at 5:50pm on the dot. The Karachi-Rawalpindi PIA flight 308 has the same schedule i.e. 4pm-5:50pm. I used to check Abu’s wristwatch or the round platform clock hanging from the roof over and over again to see first how much time was left for the train’s arrival and later if the train was behind schedule. The platform clock was very accurate. I still remember the driver reaching the platform on time and his face glowing with pride.

One day, the train was 20 minutes late and that became a hot topic all over the city.

My father was an upper division clerk in the Cabinet Division. He joined the division in Karachi in 1948 and retired as a section officer after attaining the age of superannuation in 1986.

After he joined duty in Rawalpindi, his secretary, Naseer Ahmad Faruqui, who also headed the Capital Commission (later Capital Development Authority) after General Yahya Khan, showed up on the premises of the Cabinet Division in Secretariat-I in front of the railway station and, acting like a salesman, distributed forms for the allotment of plots in Islamabad’s G-6 sector. If memory serves me right, each plot measured 400 yards and cost Rs1,200 with Rs150 to be paid in advance and Rs50 or so every month, but my father didn’t apply for it. He returned a week later to collect the forms, but my father was still not interested in getting the plot. Mr Faruqui asked him how much he had in savings. ‘Rs5,000’ was the reply.

While calling my father’s inflexible, bizarre stand an act of stupidity, his secretary offered him help in securing a house building loan from Habib Bank Limited, putting up the house under the supervision of the Capital Commission advisers, and even renting it out to the British High Commission for four years to pay the loan, but my father didn’t budge for reasons not known to anyone in the family.

All his friends availed themselves of the housing opportunity, and one of them is still alive and lives in that house.

Years after his retirement, I asked him about the reason for not buying the plot and building a house, and still think it would have better if I hadn’t put that question to him. He insisted that as a clerk, he always wanted his children, including me, to get education for good future, so he put his meagre savings by for a rainy day. He saw his dream come true as I got good education, earned a name in my profession and moved up and up the career ladder and reached the university rector’s post. It was really a proud moment for him when he attended one of my university’s convocations with his son being in the chair.

Our mother used to take all the children to her mother’s house, which stood in Rawalpindi’s Naya Mohallah locality in close proximity to the Committee Chowk. One fine day in 1961 or 1962 that was Saturday, my mother desired to see Islamabad, which was under construction. She walked to the Committee Chowk along with the children, including me, and rented a tonga (a horse-drawn carriage) for Islamabad. The carriage driver (kochwan) initially showed reluctance and insisted it would take two hours to reach Islamabad. However, my mother got even more determined to execute her plan and asked him to move ahead.

The driver signalled the horse with the help of a stick to move the carriage forward. The tonga began the journey, but as soon as it reached 6th Road in Satellite Town, my mother asked its driver how much more it would take to reach Islamabad. “Two more hours,” replied the driver. My mother took no time in asking him to abandon the journey and return.

The Cabinet Division was tasked with overseeing Islamabad’s development. I still remember the day when the federal cabinet approved the capital’s master plan and I rode in a Cabinet Division car, which transported a copy of that master plan to the Survey of Pakistan offices for approval.

Soon I got admission to a Power Lines school, designated for the children of government employees transferred from Karachi to Islamabad. Some teachers were locals and some belonged to Karachi. The school had such an Urdu-rich environment that I couldn’t get good at speaking the local Punjabi language. The teachers were knowledgeable, caring, good communicators, and a true inspiration. However, the building didn’t look nice.

I did my matriculation from there in 1964. A naughty and unstudious student, I secured second division in the examination, unlike my friends who all scored well. My father was really disappointed and upset. I tried to enrol in Rawalpindi’s major government colleges, including Gordon College, but ended up in the Satellite Town College, which perhaps had the lowest academic standards in the city. Realising the importance of good grades for further education, I concentrated on my studies and passed the FSc exams with flying colours. My subsequent academic performance was equally brilliant.

As the Indo-Pak war broke out in 1965, my fascination with planes, especially air show fighter jets, from early childhood led me to apply to the Pakistan Air Force for selection as a GD pilot. Lady luck smiled on me and I got selected, but there was something else in store for me. My father didn’t let me take up the dream job and asked me to focus on my studies. Perhaps he was worried about my life because I was the only male child not only in my family but in the extended family as well.

Though I didn’t join PAF, my passion for planes didn’t die. Even today, aviation matters from flight tracking to airport congestion to air traffic forecasting interest me and I can tell you right now how many planes are in the air and what hours are the busiest to fly.

Anyway, life moved on and I first did BSc from Rawalpindi Government College with very good grades with Physics and Mathematics as majors and then got a master’s degree in Mathematics from Government College Asghar Mall University with third position and a master’s degree in Physics from the Punjab University.

Then I started teaching Mathematics. In 1972, I was appointed a lecturer at the Federal Government College No. 1, Islamabad. The same year, I passed the CSS competitive exam and joined the Civil Services Academy, Lahore, in 1974. After completing the training next year, I joined the Finance Ministry as a section officer for two years.

My father had wanted me to become a bureaucrat and his desire was fulfilled, but I struggled to get along in the civil service. After two years of employment, I worked up the courage to seek my father’s permission to make an early career change to teaching, and that came instantly. He wished me the best of luck. It was a weight off my shoulders.

I later spoke to my immediate boss, joint secretary Siraj Yousaf. He was a strict and quick-tempered officer, so he wondered if he was the reason for my move. I put him in the picture. Deputy secretary Abdul Karim Lodhi also joined us. After listening to my standpoint patiently, both encouraged me to follow my passion for success in life. With their support and encouragement, I applied to the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) for a teacher’s job the same year, 1976 to be exact.

At that time, the Bhutto government had increased the salaries of teachers considerably to encourage more people to join the profession. A lecturer was given Rs750 a month compared to Rs500 drawn by other government employees of the same grade. By the time I cleared a job interview, the monthly salary for the post went up to Rs1,150. I was quick to take up the job.

I soon realised that it’s fun to teach and only those having a passion for this field should take it up. From 1972 to 1976, I tried to secure scholarships, but to no avail. In 1979, the Central Overseas Training scholarships for PhD were offered to teachers and each province had a quota for them. I applied for it against Islamabad’s quota. Three candidates were in the running but I turned out to be the dark horse despite being third on the list. The principal candidate was dropped for organising a strike in his college, while the nomination of the alternative candidate was cancelled over his fight with the director. In this way, the selection committee awarded me the scholarship.

I learned about it from the director. He congratulated me without revealing the reason. As my wife was pregnant at that time, I wondered if he’s got wind of the good news and is congratulating me on that matter. But, to my surprise, he smiled gently and said you’d won the scholarship, so pack for Cambridge. It was something of a miracle.

The University of Cambridge asked me to report no later than October 4, but as the delivery date was October 20, I missed the deadline and flew to the UK on October 28. As the University of Cambridge had cancelled my enrolment, I went to North Wales, where Bangor University offered me admission to a PhD programme in Computer Sciences. There I met Professor Abbas, who was also the grandson of great Indian Urdu poet Akbar Allahabadi. He promised me the impossible; a PhD degree in three years, but insisted that the programme’s application would be in laser in plasma physics. Physics-shy, I declined the offer that my Pakistani friends called a real godsend, and decided to return.

I then went to see a friend in Birmingham, who asked me to stay with him for two or three days before flying to Pakistan. I also wrote a letter to my wife about my return plans. In the evening, his friends showed up in his apartment. We played cards and discussed my issue. They asked me not to worry, advised me on future options, and even offered me to join their respective universities.

One of them took me to his Birmingham University’s Department of Engineering Production, where the professors and other relevant staff members agreed on my admission. Since the students of that programme were already halfway through the first semester, the professors asked me to join the second semester and do the remaining first at the end of the course. That was a great favour. I agreed and took up an operations research MSc programme, whose successful conclusion led to a three years PhD course.

During the first year of the programme with the professor, things went very well but afterwards, the progress came to a grinding halt. All our efforts came to naught. The professor gave me another problem but work on that, too, ended in failure. I got really frustrated to see my efforts of one and a half years go to waste. There came the third problem but I reached a dead-end in bids to solve it, too. Living in constant fear of returning without a PhD, I walked up to the professor and spoke about my inability to do the project. He asked me to relax saying it is not necessary that you always have solutions to problems, so the thesis should declare the assigned tasks didn’t produce results, so no one should work on them in the future.

Actually, we tried to develop a new algebra but failed. Later, we applied it to computer architecture, but to no avail. By that time, I was known on campus for my expertise in computers. Some university people got a newly-launched plotter known for good 3D and 4D printing results and gave it to me to see how it functioned.

During those days, my wife and I were blessed with a baby girl, the second to be born in England, so I was a little busy with the mother-child care. I somehow managed time to explore the plotter and kept experimenting with different colours on it. One day on the way home from university, an idea struck me. I thought I should apply my PhD problem to the device. “Maybe, it’ll work.” I called my wife and told her that I would be a little late, and returned. In the lab, I did some computer programming and plotting, which solved my first problem.

I went home really excited, spent time with my wife, son and new born daughter, and returned in the evening. I stayed in the lab until 4am and repeated the exercise for verification. The problem was solved. The same formula worked for the second and third problems as well. I was really hyped and was desperate to share my achievement with the professor, but he was away.

He resumed work next Monday and I went to him. We exchanged pleasantries before he asked me if I had any luck solving the problem. I replied in the affirmative. He asked, “how come?” I told him that I found the solution by experimenting with the plotter, but he didn’t believe me, wondering how a young man could solve a ‘dead’ problem. I placed the experiment results and their written summary before him and explained them.

While listening to me, he went through them all and uttered, “It’s solved already.” He glared speechlessly at me. I had no clue what was on his mind. He asked me, “We can try this formula on the second problem as well.” I took out another problem statement from my backpack and showed it to him saying the problem is almost solved. He had a look at it and approved it.

The success got him so excited that he asked me to apply the formula to the third problem as well. I shared the relevant papers with him. He sought two days’ time to check and recheck everything but said ostensibly, the job had been done. He instructed me to write a thesis in the meantime. Four days later, he returned the papers with his comments written on them and formally declared the problems solved. The solution came out of nowhere. I had absolutely no idea about it two weeks ago. Almighty Allah made that happen.

I successfully completed my PhD on scholarship. My professors asked me not to publish the thesis saying it had many things, which can be used in future. Among them was a new type of algebra, Minimax Algebra, which was made public years later. I got the PhD certificate on November 14, 1984, and the degree was to be conferred upon me in the convocation slated for December 16, 1984.

Without wasting time, I contacted the travel agent to get tickets for me, my wife and two children on the first available flight to Pakistan. He booked the November 18 tickets and updated me. In the evening, family friends visited me to congratulate me on the successful completion of the PhD course. However, our return plans shocked them. As they struggled to find a good reason for my hasty departure, I told them that I was just fulfilling a commitment, which I had made to myself to leave for Pakistan immediately after completing the course.

I returned and re-joined the H-8 College as a BPS-17 lecturer. The government had allotted me an official residence in G-7/2 before I left for England and I got it transferred to my father before leaving the country. The five years long stay in England brought about revolutionary changes in my thoughts. One of them was the use of public transport instead of owning a car.

One fine morning in February 1985, I went to the G-7/2 bus stop to take a public transport vehicle for Super Market, but no bus showed up for a long time. I had to kill time and a book was the best option for it, but I didn’t have any, so I started looking around and stumbled across a torn newspaper page on the ground. Someone had thrown it away after eating pakoras (fritters) served on it.

, which functioned under the administrative control of the Science and Technology Ministry. There were three BPS-19 positions and one of them was for the director (information technology). I had the required education and experience, so I made up my mind to apply for it. The piece of paper was so greasy that I could neither put it in my pocket nor could I hold it in my hands, so I memorised the centre’s address mentioned on it. I still remember that it was House No 4, Street No 7, F-7/1.

A few days later, I went there and saw an officer use a manual typewriter. I introduced myself and asked about the director (IT) vacancy. He was the director general of the centre Dr Shaukat Baloch, who served me a cup of tea. As we chatted about the job, I candidly asked him if he had already selected someone with a reference (sifarish) or the vacancy would be filled on ‘open merit’. He assured me that the post would go to the best candidate whosoever he or she was. I was destined to land the job via a discarded piece of paper, so I got selected. I was later promoted as the director-general and held that post until 1993 when the centre was closed down on the recommendation of the Economic Commission.

During my service, the organisers of a conference in Malaysia sent me an invitation letter to present a paper, but the then director-general kept it with him without telling me. I learned about it only after the organising team called me a day before the start of the event to know about my participation. I was taken aback. I told him that I would make it.

After hanging up, I went straight to the DG and asked him about the invitation. Avoiding eye contact as if feeling guilty, he confirmed receipt of the invitation and began sifting through the documents laid on his table before taking out a telex message from the event organisers. It was evening and I had to get to Malaysia the next morning.

During those days, it was really difficult to get clearance from different departments for such a foreign trip in such a short span of time. I got hold of the relevant pro formas, filled them at night, and took them in the morning first to my immediate boss, DG, and then to the science and technology minister for mandatory approval.

I also collected the ministry’s letters seeking no objection certificates of the economic affairs ministry, Foreign Office and Intelligence Bureau. My next stop was the Intelligence Bureau’s offices in A Block of the Pak Secretariat. I had already spoken to one of my friends, Ashraf, who was posted there as a BPS-19 officer, about the matter. He received me at the main gate, got the ministry’s letter and handed over the NOC in an envelope.

From there, I went to the Foreign Office, where one of my students, Hanif Sharif, served as an officer, helped me get the NOC in no time. The economic affairs ministry’s NOC also came without a hitch.

I later rushed to the Cabinet Division, where my father worked, and sought his help to get the cabinet secretary’s consent to my foreign trip. The secretary, with whom my father had a close acquaintance, was also quick to issue me the NOC. With all those documents, I went to my office, submitted them to the relevant section and asked my wife over the phone to pack a suitcase, and later collected the air ticket for Malaysia from my travel agent in the Sector G-6 Melody Markaz and left for home.

I flew in the morning and stopped first in Karachi and then in Colombo en route to Kuala Lumpur. There I caught a cold, but that didn’t last long and went away by the time I reached Malaysia. I made it to the conference on time, read my paper and left the hall for my room to have a lie-down. I woke up thinking I had slept for hours, so I moved to the hall to see what’s going on.

A gentleman stopped me in the escalator, introduced himself as Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, a Bangladesh-origin director at the United Nations Asia-Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology in Bangalore, India, and offered me a job right away. Caught unawares by the offer, I asked him if he knew what he’s saying as Indians would kill a Pakistani citizen on their soil. He placated me by promising security with the help of the United Nations.

I still didn’t believe him, thinking both Pakistani and Indian governments won’t let me take up that job. There followed an hour-long conversation during which the foreigner, a Bangladeshi citizen, explained everything to me about the job. I asked him to send me the job letter, saying that I will think about it.

On my homecoming, the company formally sent me a letter of the employment offer. I needed the approval of the government to take up the offer. The relevant authorities took four months over the matter. Everyone was worried about my and my family’s safety and feared that the Indians would train me to work against Pakistan’s interests. For them, it was normal for Pakistanis to go to major cities like New Delhi for employment but working in Bangalore, where perhaps no Pakistani citizen was ever employed, was a cause of concern.

Even the prime minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo, called me to know the reasons for going to India for work and that, too, with family. I replied that I always wanted to go to England to have a first-hand understanding of the people (the British), who had ruled us for 200 years, and those who are our enemy (Indians).

Having lived with Britons and Indians, I realised that they both thought and behaved alike. The English people will never open their hearts to you. They think ahead and live life sensibly and not emotionally, so it’s really hard to win their favour. They ruled half of the world astutely. Also, they’re very ruthless and spare no one no matter how close they’re. I think we should have handled them very smartly in our own interest.

The concept of fake educational degrees is quite common in our country. Many MNAs and other notable people have been accused of having fake degrees. Such certificates exist everywhere in the world including England; one can even get a fake degree from Cambridge. America has a lot of such cases as well. In this context, let me tell you a story about India.

One of my friends, while travelling from Delhi to Bombay, met a retired officer who had served as the secretary education. During their conversation, my friend asked him about fake degrees in India. He was told that out of one billion degrees awarded every year, seven hundred thousand are fake. The Indian said that this issue was given serious attention in 2001. Two think tanks got involved to find a solution to the problem. After three months, both think tanks came up with the solution that nothing should be done. According to them, if degrees were checked for authenticity then it would create chaos not only in India but also around the world where Indians were working as it was impossible to check millions of degrees.

I went to Bangalore in 1987 and worked with the Adviser Technology Information’s Asia-Pacific region for around four years. At that time, the IT sector was in its infancy with many international companies starting operations. I used to send clippings of the local newspapers’ reports and articles on IT development to the Science and Technology Ministry in Islamabad and even arranged the visit of the then science and technology secretary, Tariq Mustafa, to the Indian Space Research Organisation, Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Technology to have a first-hand insight into the Indian scientific and technological advances and update the then Pakistani president, General Ziaul Haq, about them to act accordingly as we were in dire need to bring technology to Pakistan.

However, it took us 12-13 years to comprehend the role of science and technology for development and work for it. By that time, it was too late as the Indians had already captured the market. Also, Pakistan was too short of literate people to learn computers. This way, we lagged far behind the rest of the world, including India, in the field of science and technology. In 1993, the company, where I held the director’s post, closed down. I returned and took up a BPS-19 job at the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (PCST), where I was promoted first as the scientific secretary (BPS-20) and then the secretary.

In 1998, there was a great likelihood of my grabbing the chairman’s BPS-22 coveted slot but as those were the early days of COMSATS (Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South) and it had launched internet service in the country in light of a paper I had submitted to it. During meetings with the then COMSATS executive director, Pervez Ahmad Butt, I advocated the internet to cater to the country’s current and future needs in the fast-changing world. Unfortunately, COMSATS didn’t find a single person in the country with the expertise to launch the internet service in 1994 and had to hire a Dubai-based expert to do the job.

COMSATS was an inter-governmental organisation, which was the brainchild of Pakistani scientist and Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam, who insisted that scientists of the developing countries should join forces to develop their nations without foreign aid or loans.

COMSATS became functional in October 1994. I put up a project proposal to the COMSATS in 1997 and as the organisation had no one to execute it, executive director Pervez Butt asked me to come over to execute the proposal by myself. However, my bosses at the ministry, including secretary S.M. Qureshi, didn’t relieve me of my services, insisting I’ll be the future chairman of the council. After the launch of the internet service in the country, I realised the acute shortage of IT professionals and requested the COMSATS chief to establish a proper institute to offer computer science degrees and courses.

The idea sat well with Pervez Butt, who asked me to produce a proposal for the purpose. I complied. The COMSATS executive director invited me to join the organisation to implement the proposal. There was no reason to say no. By that time, the science and technology ministry had got a new secretary, Lieutenant-General Javed Ashraf Qazi.

During a meeting, he was surprised to learn about my intention to quit the ‘promising, secure’ government job and that, too, after 26 years’ long service. I told him that I wanted to take risks. He sought reasons. I candidly asked him if I should fib or be honest with you. “First fib and then, truth,” he replied. I said the fib was that the opportunity promised career growth, better salary and fringe benefits and the truth was that I couldn’t deliver with the current team at the Council, whose replacement or the hiring of the people of choice wasn’t allowed. He didn’t ask me more questions and accepted my exit request.

I joined COMSATS for a Rs0.1 million salary along with a car carrying a special registration number, 3, in 1998. I also got a list of dos and don’ts. As we looked for a plot to build the proposed institution, Captain (retd) U.A. Isani, the chairman of the University Grants Commission (now Higher Education Commission), gave us a space on their premises.

Had Pervez Butt not spoken to Isani sahib on that day, COMSATS would have never taken shape. Pervez Butt quit on the completion of the contractual term in 1999 and I acted as a stand-in for the permanent executive director for one year. Pervez Butt was succeeded by Dr Hameed Khan, an accomplished technocrat. I returned to COMSATS to establish an institute of information and technology.

The same year, army chief General Pervez Musharraf grabbed power in a coup. While carrying out institutional reforms, he once called a meeting on education. A handful of experts and stakeholders were invited to it. I was among them. The military ruler sought proposals for furthering the cause of education in the country. I informed him that the establishment of COMSATS University had been planned for over a year but the charter issue had thrown a spanner in the works. He promised me the grant of a charter for the university free of charge and fulfilled the promise in 2000. COMSATS was declared a recognised institution.

Built on a small plot in Sector H-8, the institute had 756 students in the first year. As we got a lot of projects, we moved places and today, we have thousands of students. COMSATS Islamabad did really well. We started from the basement of the Sir Syed Memorial Building and then put up a small building on the HEC premises with the agreement of using it for eight years.

Once, Musharraf showed up to attend the university inauguration ceremony. We asked him for land to build our own campus. Complaining that the Capital Development Authority’s bosses didn’t listen to him, he promised to grant land in Abbottabad and left. A few days later, the chief executive called me and said the Pakistan Army had donated land for the campus and a Rs.40 million project had been approved. The donation of land by the army was unprecedented. However, the army is now trying to take that land back now. The land had barracks, which dated back to World War II. Fearing the land allotment can be withdrawn anytime, we began construction on the land.

Pakistan Ordnance Factories chairman Lt-General (retd) Abdul Qayyum, who later became a senator, called for a campus in Wah, too, so we acted accordingly. We identified the dilapidated building of the Muhammad Nawaz Sharif Institute of Technology in Lahore in 2004 to put up our campus. The Raiwind Road building should have been ready but the military coup in 1999 brought the work to a grinding halt. Musharraf hated the ousted prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, so much that he could not even stand the sight of his name anywhere and therefore, the building was abandoned.

Science and technology minister Dr Attaur Rehman offered the building to the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, and National University of Sciences and Technology, Rawalpindi, to develop the campus but got poor response due to overgrown grass and presence of dogs and snakes.

I managed to acquire the premises, readied it for the COMSATS campus within three months and began classes. Spread over 183 acres of land with 0.4 square feet covered area, it later became one of the largest COMSATS campuses in the country. At that time, Sahiwal MNA Chaudhary Nouraiz Shakoor Khan was the science and technology minister. He ordered the opening of a campus in his district. I offered to enrol the students from Sahiwal in Islamabad, but he refused to change his mind and gave us a piece of land though in a far-off area of Sahiwal along with funds, so a campus was opened there as well. Today, it is one of our best campuses.

His successor, well-connected MNA Tehmina Daultana, too, forced us into meeting an unrealistic demand of opening a campus in her hometown, Vehari. The same went for the Attock campus. We started it in 2004 at the desire of the then district nazim, Major (retd) Tahir Sadiq, and on the directions of Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, who was his brother-in-law.

The COMSATS University currently has around 38,000 students enrolled in Islamabad, Lahore, Wah, Attock, Sahiwal, Vehari and a virtual campus. We began with three subjects, including computer sciences, computer engineering and software engineering, but the number has surged to 96. The students total around 38,000. We also have 1,200 PhDs, the most in any educational institution in the country.

COMSATS sends around 100 students abroad for PhD programs on scholarship every year without seeking funds from the government. Our around 800 students have obtained PhD degrees from our university and around 400 from abroad. The recipients of our international scholarship programs are bound by their contracts to join us for at least five years after obtaining degrees.

COMSATS stands out from other universities in the country for producing a record 2,400 international publications a year. The Quaid-i-Azam University is second in the list with around 1,110 publications. We hope to take our tally to 3,000.

I remained the COMSATS rector from 1999 to 2017 and had to leave due to the opposition of some members of the COMSATS governing board. They intended to advertise the post and asked me to appear in the interview like other candidates. I declined saying I’ve done my job and if the board doesn’t want me to continue, I will go away. The board went ahead with the interview plans bringing down the curtain on my term as the rector. During those days, the executive director’s post, which I held during the early days of COMSATS in 1991, fell vacant. I applied for it and got selected. Since then, 2017 to be exact, I’ve been working at COMSATS as the executive director. That’s the story of my return to the executive director office after a gap of 36 years.

All through my career, I never recommended anyone. I appeared for a job interview for the last time in 1985. From 1994 onward, I held top managerial posts. I still remember the day I said my farewell to my professor, he gave me an envelope with a job offer letter, which I didn’t open, and left. On homecoming, I checked the letter. It was a good employment opportunity at the SumoTire company. I got bored stiff within a year to see there is actually no work to do.

At that time, Intel, an American multinational technology company, launched a new computer microprocessor, 286, after making architectural and networking changes to the previous one and using Minimax Algebra developed by me and my colleagues. The company sent me a letter to acknowledge the significance of my accomplishment in the world of computers. Extending a ‘standing job offer’, it said I could join whenever I wanted to.

I feel really proud of my two contributions to the field of computers, including the development of 286 microprocessor, which helped solve multiple equations in one go unlike the past when it happened individually, and active involvement in the internet development by an ARPAnet team during my stay in England. Other members of the team were based in the US and Switzerland. I stayed in contact with them even returning to Pakistan and wrote many protocols for them. That was the basis for my selection for internet development in the country.

It’s unfortunate that our governments haven’t prioritised scientific development. As a nation, we lag far behind the rest of the world in the fields of science and technology. I’m not opposed to the government’s initiative of building houses for the people but prime minister Imran Khan should also focus his attention on the creation of employment opportunities for the youth, especially through investment in science and technology. We have to benefit from modern technology. Our youth are very talented. Many companies in the US want to hire them. What the government needs to do is to train them.

I had a keen desire to join the Pakistan Air Force, but that didn’t happen. The man should resign to the will of the Almighty Allah and should be thankful to Him for His blessings. I’ve no regrets in life; whatever He chose for me was the best. I’ve travelled to many countries for learning, discussion, and sightseeing. I passed the FPSC exam and sat the CSS competitive exam twice and even secured a position in the second attempt but decided not to join the civil service and didn’t look back. I’m really grateful to Almighty Allah for granting me great respect in the profession.

There are many people who contributed significantly to what I’m today. Noted among them is my father, who was an influential person with a strong character and personality, which always impressed me. However, it doesn’t mean that I wanted to be just like him. We’d different dispositions. The things I can bear were unbearable for him. He’d his own set of principles and the people under his influence had to follow them in any case. He migrated to Pakistan from Lucknow city in northern India at the time of Partition.

As the city was a major centre of the India Muslim League’s freedom struggle, my father, like other young family members and residents, enthusiastically participated in such activities and others against the British government.

One night, his younger brother, Syed Muhammad Shoaib Zaidi, a college student, came home late night spinning a heavy padlock on his fingers that produced a little noise, which woke the grandfather up from a sleep. He wondered what that noise was. My uncle replied it came from the lock of a bank he looted along with other young Muslim League activists. Worried, my grandfather asked about the plunder and my uncle replied, “Other guys took it away”. Fearing action by the authorities, my grandfather got that lock disposed of in the nearby River Gomti.

My grandfather got stuck in India at the time of Partition in August 1947 due to my uncle’s studies. However, my father moved to Pakistan. My uncle later finished the law college and emerged as a successful legal practitioner. During those days, securing a passport used to be a tall order both in India and Pakistan. He attested a passport form, which turned out to be fake. There followed litigation and his conviction by a ruthless Hindu judge, who seized his law practice licence and banned him from going out of the country. The year was 1953. The same day, my grandfather suffered a brain haemorrhage causing his death two days later.

My uncle later married a medical doctor, got himself enrolled in a medical college, and became an expert in medico-legal field. He got permission for foreign travel in 1978 and visited us in Pakistan, while I saw him and his family many times during my employment in Bangalore.

Like me, my father, too, was the only male child in his extended family. All others died in early childhood. The family brought him up with extra care to ensure his survival. He had a paan addiction and used to chew as many as 15 betel leaves with katha (red catechu) pasted on it daily. According to his maternal aunt, the addiction dated back to his early childhood. He was just six months old when women visitors, out of their love for him due to his fair complexion and golden curly hair, used to put a pinch of katha in his mouth, and from then on, he developed the habit of chewing paan. He quit it after the fall of Dhaka in December 1971.

East Pakistan supplied betel leaves to West Pakistan before the creation of Bangladesh. Around 56 at that time, my father insisted that as betel leaves grown in East Pakistan were replaced by the Indian ones in Pakistan, he would never chew them. He fulfilled that commitment until his death. That showed his aversion to India. During my stay in India, I invited him to see me and even sent him air tickets, but he never went there.

COMSATS executive director Pervez Butt was also an amazing person. He was good at managing things efficiently yet calmly. He used to finish work at three o’clock and leave the office. Once, the prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, called him on landline but he was away. When he came back, he first settled down in the armchair and then returned the call without panicking.

Lieutenant-General Javed Ashraf Qazi, also the COMSATS executive director, was very particular about cleanliness. He always kept his office table spick and span. Science and technology secretary Javed Masood used to prepare well for meetings. My MSc teacher, Munir Zaidi, was a very handsome man. He had neat handwriting, always took care of personal hygiene, and was very gentle with staff members and visitors. I owe my nice handwriting and good manners to him.

The role of my wife was equally important in my life. She stuck by me through life’s ups and downs. She took care of the family very well and never asked me for anything, not even jewellery. She’s the linchpin of our family life. She never requested me to leave work and come home and strictly followed our unwritten understanding that whenever the need arose, I would be home. We got married in 1978 and have three children, a son and two daughters.

Whenever I look around, I generally see good things everywhere. Pakistan is not as bad as the news channels show us every day. Things are very different on the ground if seen positively.

I vividly remember the courageous response of the residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the havoc caused by floods six or seven years ago. As the waters receded and the clean-up and rehabilitation efforts began, I, along with my team, visited a village in Nowshera district where the calamity had turned lives upside down, to provide assistance. Though ruined, the people showed remarkable strength and resilience and exceptional hospitality. We came across an elderly man sitting next to his destroyed house. He received us with a gentle smile but what pleasantly surprised us was his apology for not serving us food. He requested us to return a month later to be his guest at his rebuilt house. Believe me, this spirit is our real strength to move forward.

When I look back at my childhood, they were good days. Memories from the early days I spent in Karachi and Rawalpindi are my most cherished possessions. I was born in Rawalpindi in 1949. During those times, the women used to return to the homes of their parents during the last months of pregnancy for care and delivery. My maternal grandmother lived in the garrison city, so my mother came to her heavily pregnant. She stayed there for a few months and took children, including the new-born me, back to Karachi to join my father, Syed Muhammad Zubair Zaidi, who was a government employee. They had got married in Sukkur.

I was the eldest of three siblings. All of them except a sister were born in Rawalpindi. I had a strict upbringing. My mother was a devout Muslim, who would wake me up before dawn to offer Fajr prayers and recite the Holy Qur’an. She’d an uncompromising viewpoint about starting the day with the name of Allah, which later became my lifelong habit.

My parents used to fight over for what I should go first, the Holy Qur’an or formal education. My mother favoured the Nazra Qur’an (Qur’an recitation course) but Abu (Father) advocated the school. I finished Nazra in a local mosque and revised it at home and then my mother asked my father to put me in school. I was taught three subjects, including English, science and mathematics, at home and was enrolled in a local school as a fifth-grader in 1957. We lived in our own house in Pak Colony in Karachi. There was no electric supply, so I used to study in the light of a lantern at night. Pakistan had yet not started television transmissions. Radio Pakistan was there but only a few people had radio sets. Our family wasn’t among them.

In October 1958, military leader General Ayub Khan invoked martial law in the country and formed a commission to select a suitable place near Rawalpindi for the national capital. Though he advocated the area behind Margalla hills near Abbottabad district towards the north, the commission settled on a location, to be called Islamabad, at the foot of the hills. As the necessary development work had to be completed in the new capital, the staff members and goods of key divisions and ministries, including the Cabinet Division, were temporarily shifted to the adjoining Rawalpindi from Karachi by train within a year. The exercise was carried out by eight trains.

Only a few ministries, including the defence, continued to function in Karachi. The government converted military barracks into houses for newly-arrived employees from Knot Lines to Robert Lines in the Westridge area and Palmer Lines near Saddar shifted the military personnel to Kharian and declared the area the cantonment, rented houses for senior officers in the Satellite Town, and established offices, schools and dispensaries.

My father was transferred from Karachi to Rawalpindi, so we all moved there. Rawalpindi used to be a nice, small cantonment area and no one had the slightest idea at that time that the country’s future capital would emerge in its neighbourhood and the region would become central to the country’s political, economic and security decision-making.

I still remember that in 1959, when I was 10, The Mall in Rawalpindi’s cantonment area was sprayed with water and sprinkled with limestone every evening in the summer. The city had the similar buses, which ply across England even today. The bus would arrive at the designated stop on time with the people already queued up to ride it, and the conductor would disclose how many to hop on. The others in the queue would wait until the next bus arrived. The interval between buses was 15-20 minutes. Tongas, horse-drawn carriages, were common but a handful of taxicabs could also be seen on the roads.

Offices used to open at 7:15am and close by 2:15pm in the summer, while the winter timings were 7:30am-2:30pm. People used to nap after reaching home. Military officers streamed out of the General Headquarters pedalling bicycles to their homes. That sight was really fascinating for me. The roads had just a few vehicles. There were only Volkswagen Beetle cars, popularly known as Foxy, which carried a price tag of Rs6,000. People mostly used Vespa scooters for conveyance. The scooter was about Rs1,100 and the price doubled afterwards.

Parents used to gift wristwatches to their children on matriculation. The Swiss Roamer RW watch was considered a valuable gift. It was smuggled into the country from Afghanistan via Landi Kotal area and priced at around Rs100, the Swiss Roamer RW watch was considered a valuable gift. I had grown fond of wristwatches over the years but had none. My father also had a liking for watches and used the Western company’s watches. A chain hanging out of the railway guard’s pocket and attached to a watch held a fascination for him.

As there was a lack of outdoor recreational areas, our Abu (Father) used to take me and my younger sister to the railway station at around 5pm to have samosa chaat, a satisfying street snack. Comprising two samosas and served with chutney in a stainless steel plate, it cost one anna (six paisas of today). It was good fun. Like other children, I used to stand along the railway track to keenly watch the Tezgam train come in from Karachi. It would always arrive at 5:50pm on the dot. The Karachi-Rawalpindi PIA flight 308 has the same schedule i.e. 4pm-5:50pm. I used to check Abu’s wristwatch or the round platform clock hanging from the roof over and over again to see first how much time was left for the train’s arrival and later if the train was behind schedule. The platform clock was very accurate. I still remember the driver reaching the platform on time and his face glowing with pride.

One day, the train was 20 minutes late and that became a hot topic all over the city.

My father was an upper division clerk in the Cabinet Division. He joined the division in Karachi in 1948 and retired as a section officer after attaining the age of superannuation in 1986.

After he joined duty in Rawalpindi, his secretary, Naseer Ahmad Faruqui, who also headed the Capital Commission (later Capital Development Authority) after General Yahya Khan, showed up on the premises of the Cabinet Division in Secretariat-I in front of the railway station and, acting like a salesman, distributed forms for the allotment of plots in Islamabad’s G-6 sector. If memory serves me right, each plot measured 400 yards and cost Rs1,200 with Rs150 to be paid in advance and Rs50 or so every month, but my father didn’t apply for it. He returned a week later to collect the forms, but my father was still not interested in getting the plot. Mr Faruqui asked him how much he had in savings. ‘Rs5,000’ was the reply.

While calling my father’s inflexible, bizarre stand an act of stupidity, his secretary offered him help in securing a house building loan from Habib Bank Limited, putting up the house under the supervision of the Capital Commission advisers, and even renting it out to the British High Commission for four years to pay the loan, but my father didn’t budge for reasons not known to anyone in the family.

All his friends availed themselves of the housing opportunity, and one of them is still alive and lives in that house.

Years after his retirement, I asked him about the reason for not buying the plot and building a house, and still think it would have better if I hadn’t put that question to him. He insisted that as a clerk, he always wanted his children, including me, to get education for good future, so he put his meagre savings by for a rainy day. He saw his dream come true as I got good education, earned a name in my profession and moved up and up the career ladder and reached the university rector’s post. It was really a proud moment for him when he attended one of my university’s convocations with his son being in the chair.

Our mother used to take all the children to her mother’s house, which stood in Rawalpindi’s Naya Mohallah locality in close proximity to the Committee Chowk. One fine day in 1961 or 1962 that was Saturday, my mother desired to see Islamabad, which was under construction. She walked to the Committee Chowk along with the children, including me, and rented a tonga (a horse-drawn carriage) for Islamabad. The carriage driver (kochwan) initially showed reluctance and insisted it would take two hours to reach Islamabad. However, my mother got even more determined to execute her plan and asked him to move ahead.

The driver signalled the horse with the help of a stick to move the carriage forward. The tonga began the journey, but as soon as it reached 6th Road in Satellite Town, my mother asked its driver how much more it would take to reach Islamabad. “Two more hours,” replied the driver. My mother took no time in asking him to abandon the journey and return.

The Cabinet Division was tasked with overseeing Islamabad’s development. I still remember the day when the federal cabinet approved the capital’s master plan and I rode in a Cabinet Division car, which transported a copy of that master plan to the Survey of Pakistan offices for approval.

Soon I got admission to a Power Lines school, designated for the children of government employees transferred from Karachi to Islamabad. Some teachers were locals and some belonged to Karachi. The school had such an Urdu-rich environment that I couldn’t get good at speaking the local Punjabi language. The teachers were knowledgeable, caring, good communicators, and a true inspiration. However, the building didn’t look nice.

I did my matriculation from there in 1964. A naughty and unstudious student, I secured second division in the examination, unlike my friends who all scored well. My father was really disappointed and upset. I tried to enrol in Rawalpindi’s major government colleges, including Gordon College, but ended up in the Satellite Town College, which perhaps had the lowest academic standards in the city. Realising the importance of good grades for further education, I concentrated on my studies and passed the FSc exams with flying colours. My subsequent academic performance was equally brilliant.

As the Indo-Pak war broke out in 1965, my fascination with planes, especially air show fighter jets, from early childhood led me to apply to the Pakistan Air Force for selection as a GD pilot. Lady luck smiled on me and I got selected, but there was something else in store for me. My father didn’t let me take up the dream job and asked me to focus on my studies. Perhaps he was worried about my life because I was the only male child not only in my family but in the extended family as well.

Though I didn’t join PAF, my passion for planes didn’t die. Even today, aviation matters from flight tracking to airport congestion to air traffic forecasting interest me and I can tell you right now how many planes are in the air and what hours are the busiest to fly.

Anyway, life moved on and I first did BSc from Rawalpindi Government College with very good grades with Physics and Mathematics as majors and then got a master’s degree in Mathematics from Government College Asghar Mall University with third position and a master’s degree in Physics from the Punjab University.

Then I started teaching Mathematics. In 1972, I was appointed a lecturer at the Federal Government College No. 1, Islamabad. The same year, I passed the CSS competitive exam and joined the Civil Services Academy, Lahore, in 1974. After completing the training next year, I joined the Finance Ministry as a section officer for two years.

My father had wanted me to become a bureaucrat and his desire was fulfilled, but I struggled to get along in the civil service. After two years of employment, I worked up the courage to seek my father’s permission to make an early career change to teaching, and that came instantly. He wished me the best of luck. It was a weight off my shoulders.

I later spoke to my immediate boss, joint secretary Siraj Yousaf. He was a strict and quick-tempered officer, so he wondered if he was the reason for my move. I put him in the picture. Deputy secretary Abdul Karim Lodhi also joined us. After listening to my standpoint patiently, both encouraged me to follow my passion for success in life. With their support and encouragement, I applied to the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) for a teacher’s job the same year, 1976 to be exact.

At that time, the Bhutto government had increased the salaries of teachers considerably to encourage more people to join the profession. A lecturer was given Rs750 a month compared to Rs500 drawn by other government employees of the same grade. By the time I cleared a job interview, the monthly salary for the post went up to Rs1,150. I was quick to take up the job.

I soon realised that it’s fun to teach and only those having a passion for this field should take it up. From 1972 to 1976, I tried to secure scholarships, but to no avail. In 1979, the Central Overseas Training scholarships for PhD were offered to teachers and each province had a quota for them. I applied for it against Islamabad’s quota. Three candidates were in the running but I turned out to be the dark horse despite being third on the list. The principal candidate was dropped for organising a strike in his college, while the nomination of the alternative candidate was cancelled over his fight with the director. In this way, the selection committee awarded me the scholarship.

I learned about it from the director. He congratulated me without revealing the reason. As my wife was pregnant at that time, I wondered if he’s got wind of the good news and is congratulating me on that matter. But, to my surprise, he smiled gently and said you’d won the scholarship, so pack for Cambridge. It was something of a miracle.

The University of Cambridge asked me to report no later than October 4, but as the delivery date was October 20, I missed the deadline and flew to the UK on October 28. As the University of Cambridge had cancelled my enrolment, I went to North Wales, where Bangor University offered me admission to a PhD programme in Computer Sciences. There I met Professor Abbas, who was also the grandson of great Indian Urdu poet Akbar Allahabadi. He promised me the impossible; a PhD degree in three years, but insisted that the programme’s application would be in laser in plasma physics. Physics-shy, I declined the offer that my Pakistani friends called a real godsend, and decided to return.

I then went to see a friend in Birmingham, who asked me to stay with him for two or three days before flying to Pakistan. I also wrote a letter to my wife about my return plans. In the evening, his friends showed up in his apartment. We played cards and discussed my issue. They asked me not to worry, advised me on future options, and even offered me to join their respective universities.

One of them took me to his Birmingham University’s Department of Engineering Production, where the professors and other relevant staff members agreed on my admission. Since the students of that programme were already halfway through the first semester, the professors asked me to join the second semester and do the remaining first at the end of the course. That was a great favour. I agreed and took up an operations research MSc programme, whose successful conclusion led to a three years PhD course.

During the first year of the programme with the professor, things went very well but afterwards, the progress came to a grinding halt. All our efforts came to naught. The professor gave me another problem but work on that, too, ended in failure. I got really frustrated to see my efforts of one and a half years go to waste. There came the third problem but I reached a dead-end in bids to solve it, too. Living in constant fear of returning without a PhD, I walked up to the professor and spoke about my inability to do the project. He asked me to relax saying it is not necessary that you always have solutions to problems, so the thesis should declare the assigned tasks didn’t produce results, so no one should work on them in the future.

Actually, we tried to develop a new algebra but failed. Later, we applied it to computer architecture, but to no avail. By that time, I was known on campus for my expertise in computers. Some university people got a newly-launched plotter known for good 3D and 4D printing results and gave it to me to see how it functioned.

During those days, my wife and I were blessed with a baby girl, the second to be born in England, so I was a little busy with the mother-child care. I somehow managed time to explore the plotter and kept experimenting with different colours on it. One day on the way home from university, an idea struck me. I thought I should apply my PhD problem to the device. “Maybe, it’ll work.” I called my wife and told her that I would be a little late, and returned. In the lab, I did some computer programming and plotting, which solved my first problem.

I went home really excited, spent time with my wife, son and new born daughter, and returned in the evening. I stayed in the lab until 4am and repeated the exercise for verification. The problem was solved. The same formula worked for the second and third problems as well. I was really hyped and was desperate to share my achievement with the professor, but he was away.

He resumed work next Monday and I went to him. We exchanged pleasantries before he asked me if I had any luck solving the problem. I replied in the affirmative. He asked, “how come?” I told him that I found the solution by experimenting with the plotter, but he didn’t believe me, wondering how a young man could solve a ‘dead’ problem. I placed the experiment results and their written summary before him and explained them.

While listening to me, he went through them all and uttered, “It’s solved already.” He glared speechlessly at me. I had no clue what was on his mind. He asked me, “We can try this formula on the second problem as well.” I took out another problem statement from my backpack and showed it to him saying the problem is almost solved. He had a look at it and approved it.

The success got him so excited that he asked me to apply the formula to the third problem as well. I shared the relevant papers with him. He sought two days’ time to check and recheck everything but said ostensibly, the job had been done. He instructed me to write a thesis in the meantime. Four days later, he returned the papers with his comments written on them and formally declared the problems solved. The solution came out of nowhere. I had absolutely no idea about it two weeks ago. Almighty Allah made that happen.

I successfully completed my PhD on scholarship. My professors asked me not to publish the thesis saying it had many things, which can be used in future. Among them was a new type of algebra, Minimax Algebra, which was made public years later. I got the PhD certificate on November 14, 1984, and the degree was to be conferred upon me in the convocation slated for December 16, 1984.

Without wasting time, I contacted the travel agent to get tickets for me, my wife and two children on the first available flight to Pakistan. He booked the November 18 tickets and updated me. In the evening, family friends visited me to congratulate me on the successful completion of the PhD course. However, our return plans shocked them. As they struggled to find a good reason for my hasty departure, I told them that I was just fulfilling a commitment, which I had made to myself to leave for Pakistan immediately after completing the course.

I returned and re-joined the H-8 College as a BPS-17 lecturer. The government had allotted me an official residence in G-7/2 before I left for England and I got it transferred to my father before leaving the country. The five years long stay in England brought about revolutionary changes in my thoughts. One of them was the use of public transport instead of owning a car.

One fine morning in February 1985, I went to the G-7/2 bus stop to take a public transport vehicle for Super Market, but no bus showed up for a long time. I had to kill time and a book was the best option for it, but I didn’t have any, so I started looking around and stumbled across a torn newspaper page on the ground. Someone had thrown it away after eating pakoras (fritters) served on it.

, which functioned under the administrative control of the Science and Technology Ministry. There were three BPS-19 positions and one of them was for the director (information technology). I had the required education and experience, so I made up my mind to apply for it. The piece of paper was so greasy that I could neither put it in my pocket nor could I hold it in my hands, so I memorised the centre’s address mentioned on it. I still remember that it was House No 4, Street No 7, F-7/1.

A few days later, I went there and saw an officer use a manual typewriter. I introduced myself and asked about the director (IT) vacancy. He was the director general of the centre Dr Shaukat Baloch, who served me a cup of tea. As we chatted about the job, I candidly asked him if he had already selected someone with a reference (sifarish) or the vacancy would be filled on ‘open merit’. He assured me that the post would go to the best candidate whosoever he or she was. I was destined to land the job via a discarded piece of paper, so I got selected. I was later promoted as the director-general and held that post until 1993 when the centre was closed down on the recommendation of the Economic Commission.

During my service, the organisers of a conference in Malaysia sent me an invitation letter to present a paper, but the then director-general kept it with him without telling me. I learned about it only after the organising team called me a day before the start of the event to know about my participation. I was taken aback. I told him that I would make it.

After hanging up, I went straight to the DG and asked him about the invitation. Avoiding eye contact as if feeling guilty, he confirmed receipt of the invitation and began sifting through the documents laid on his table before taking out a telex message from the event organisers. It was evening and I had to get to Malaysia the next morning.

During those days, it was really difficult to get clearance from different departments for such a foreign trip in such a short span of time. I got hold of the relevant pro formas, filled them at night, and took them in the morning first to my immediate boss, DG, and then to the science and technology minister for mandatory approval.

I also collected the ministry’s letters seeking no objection certificates of the economic affairs ministry, Foreign Office and Intelligence Bureau. My next stop was the Intelligence Bureau’s offices in A Block of the Pak Secretariat. I had already spoken to one of my friends, Ashraf, who was posted there as a BPS-19 officer, about the matter. He received me at the main gate, got the ministry’s letter and handed over the NOC in an envelope.

From there, I went to the Foreign Office, where one of my students, Hanif Sharif, served as an officer, helped me get the NOC in no time. The economic affairs ministry’s NOC also came without a hitch.

I later rushed to the Cabinet Division, where my father worked, and sought his help to get the cabinet secretary’s consent to my foreign trip. The secretary, with whom my father had a close acquaintance, was also quick to issue me the NOC. With all those documents, I went to my office, submitted them to the relevant section and asked my wife over the phone to pack a suitcase, and later collected the air ticket for Malaysia from my travel agent in the Sector G-6 Melody Markaz and left for home.

I flew in the morning and stopped first in Karachi and then in Colombo en route to Kuala Lumpur. There I caught a cold, but that didn’t last long and went away by the time I reached Malaysia. I made it to the conference on time, read my paper and left the hall for my room to have a lie-down. I woke up thinking I had slept for hours, so I moved to the hall to see what’s going on.

A gentleman stopped me in the escalator, introduced himself as Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, a Bangladesh-origin director at the United Nations Asia-Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology in Bangalore, India, and offered me a job right away. Caught unawares by the offer, I asked him if he knew what he’s saying as Indians would kill a Pakistani citizen on their soil. He placated me by promising security with the help of the United Nations.

I still didn’t believe him, thinking both Pakistani and Indian governments won’t let me take up that job. There followed an hour-long conversation during which the foreigner, a Bangladeshi citizen, explained everything to me about the job. I asked him to send me the job letter, saying that I will think about it.

On my homecoming, the company formally sent me a letter of the employment offer. I needed the approval of the government to take up the offer. The relevant authorities took four months over the matter. Everyone was worried about my and my family’s safety and feared that the Indians would train me to work against Pakistan’s interests. For them, it was normal for Pakistanis to go to major cities like New Delhi for employment but working in Bangalore, where perhaps no Pakistani citizen was ever employed, was a cause of concern.

Even the prime minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo, called me to know the reasons for going to India for work and that, too, with family. I replied that I always wanted to go to England to have a first-hand understanding of the people (the British), who had ruled us for 200 years, and those who are our enemy (Indians).

Having lived with Britons and Indians, I realised that they both thought and behaved alike. The English people will never open their hearts to you. They think ahead and live life sensibly and not emotionally, so it’s really hard to win their favour. They ruled half of the world astutely. Also, they’re very ruthless and spare no one no matter how close they’re. I think we should have handled them very smartly in our own interest.

The concept of fake educational degrees is quite common in our country. Many MNAs and other notable people have been accused of having fake degrees. Such certificates exist everywhere in the world including England; one can even get a fake degree from Cambridge. America has a lot of such cases as well. In this context, let me tell you a story about India.

One of my friends, while travelling from Delhi to Bombay, met a retired officer who had served as the secretary education. During their conversation, my friend asked him about fake degrees in India. He was told that out of one billion degrees awarded every year, seven hundred thousand are fake. The Indian said that this issue was given serious attention in 2001. Two think tanks got involved to find a solution to the problem. After three months, both think tanks came up with the solution that nothing should be done. According to them, if degrees were checked for authenticity then it would create chaos not only in India but also around the world where Indians were working as it was impossible to check millions of degrees.

I went to Bangalore in 1987 and worked with the Adviser Technology Information’s Asia-Pacific region for around four years. At that time, the IT sector was in its infancy with many international companies starting operations. I used to send clippings of the local newspapers’ reports and articles on IT development to the Science and Technology Ministry in Islamabad and even arranged the visit of the then science and technology secretary, Tariq Mustafa, to the Indian Space Research Organisation, Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Technology to have a first-hand insight into the Indian scientific and technological advances and update the then Pakistani president, General Ziaul Haq, about them to act accordingly as we were in dire need to bring technology to Pakistan.

However, it took us 12-13 years to comprehend the role of science and technology for development and work for it. By that time, it was too late as the Indians had already captured the market. Also, Pakistan was too short of literate people to learn computers. This way, we lagged far behind the rest of the world, including India, in the field of science and technology. In 1993, the company, where I held the director’s post, closed down. I returned and took up a BPS-19 job at the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (PCST), where I was promoted first as the scientific secretary (BPS-20) and then the secretary.

In 1998, there was a great likelihood of my grabbing the chairman’s BPS-22 coveted slot but as those were the early days of COMSATS (Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South) and it had launched internet service in the country in light of a paper I had submitted to it. During meetings with the then COMSATS executive director, Pervez Ahmad Butt, I advocated the internet to cater to the country’s current and future needs in the fast-changing world. Unfortunately, COMSATS didn’t find a single person in the country with the expertise to launch the internet service in 1994 and had to hire a Dubai-based expert to do the job.

COMSATS was an inter-governmental organisation, which was the brainchild of Pakistani scientist and Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam, who insisted that scientists of the developing countries should join forces to develop their nations without foreign aid or loans.

COMSATS became functional in October 1994. I put up a project proposal to the COMSATS in 1997 and as the organisation had no one to execute it, executive director Pervez Butt asked me to come over to execute the proposal by myself. However, my bosses at the ministry, including secretary S.M. Qureshi, didn’t relieve me of my services, insisting I’ll be the future chairman of the council. After the launch of the internet service in the country, I realised the acute shortage of IT professionals and requested the COMSATS chief to establish a proper institute to offer computer science degrees and courses.

The idea sat well with Pervez Butt, who asked me to produce a proposal for the purpose. I complied. The COMSATS executive director invited me to join the organisation to implement the proposal. There was no reason to say no. By that time, the science and technology ministry had got a new secretary, Lieutenant-General Javed Ashraf Qazi.

During a meeting, he was surprised to learn about my intention to quit the ‘promising, secure’ government job and that, too, after 26 years’ long service. I told him that I wanted to take risks. He sought reasons. I candidly asked him if I should fib or be honest with you. “First fib and then, truth,” he replied. I said the fib was that the opportunity promised career growth, better salary and fringe benefits and the truth was that I couldn’t deliver with the current team at the Council, whose replacement or the hiring of the people of choice wasn’t allowed. He didn’t ask me more questions and accepted my exit request.

I joined COMSATS for a Rs0.1 million salary along with a car carrying a special registration number, 3, in 1998. I also got a list of dos and don’ts. As we looked for a plot to build the proposed institution, Captain (retd) U.A. Isani, the chairman of the University Grants Commission (now Higher Education Commission), gave us a space on their premises.

Had Pervez Butt not spoken to Isani sahib on that day, COMSATS would have never taken shape. Pervez Butt quit on the completion of the contractual term in 1999 and I acted as a stand-in for the permanent executive director for one year. Pervez Butt was succeeded by Dr Hameed Khan, an accomplished technocrat. I returned to COMSATS to establish an institute of information and technology.

The same year, army chief General Pervez Musharraf grabbed power in a coup. While carrying out institutional reforms, he once called a meeting on education. A handful of experts and stakeholders were invited to it. I was among them. The military ruler sought proposals for furthering the cause of education in the country. I informed him that the establishment of COMSATS University had been planned for over a year but the charter issue had thrown a spanner in the works. He promised me the grant of a charter for the university free of charge and fulfilled the promise in 2000. COMSATS was declared a recognised institution.

Built on a small plot in Sector H-8, the institute had 756 students in the first year. As we got a lot of projects, we moved places and today, we have thousands of students. COMSATS Islamabad did really well. We started from the basement of the Sir Syed Memorial Building and then put up a small building on the HEC premises with the agreement of using it for eight years.

Once, Musharraf showed up to attend the university inauguration ceremony. We asked him for land to build our own campus. Complaining that the Capital Development Authority’s bosses didn’t listen to him, he promised to grant land in Abbottabad and left. A few days later, the chief executive called me and said the Pakistan Army had donated land for the campus and a Rs.40 million project had been approved. The donation of land by the army was unprecedented. However, the army is now trying to take that land back now. The land had barracks, which dated back to World War II. Fearing the land allotment can be withdrawn anytime, we began construction on the land.

Pakistan Ordnance Factories chairman Lt-General (retd) Abdul Qayyum, who later became a senator, called for a campus in Wah, too, so we acted accordingly. We identified the dilapidated building of the Muhammad Nawaz Sharif Institute of Technology in Lahore in 2004 to put up our campus. The Raiwind Road building should have been ready but the military coup in 1999 brought the work to a grinding halt. Musharraf hated the ousted prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, so much that he could not even stand the sight of his name anywhere and therefore, the building was abandoned.

Science and technology minister Dr Attaur Rehman offered the building to the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, and National University of Sciences and Technology, Rawalpindi, to develop the campus but got poor response due to overgrown grass and presence of dogs and snakes.

I managed to acquire the premises, readied it for the COMSATS campus within three months and began classes. Spread over 183 acres of land with 0.4 square feet covered area, it later became one of the largest COMSATS campuses in the country. At that time, Sahiwal MNA Chaudhary Nouraiz Shakoor Khan was the science and technology minister. He ordered the opening of a campus in his district. I offered to enrol the students from Sahiwal in Islamabad, but he refused to change his mind and gave us a piece of land though in a far-off area of Sahiwal along with funds, so a campus was opened there as well. Today, it is one of our best campuses.

His successor, well-connected MNA Tehmina Daultana, too, forced us into meeting an unrealistic demand of opening a campus in her hometown, Vehari. The same went for the Attock campus. We started it in 2004 at the desire of the then district nazim, Major (retd) Tahir Sadiq, and on the directions of Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, who was his brother-in-law.

The COMSATS University currently has around 38,000 students enrolled in Islamabad, Lahore, Wah, Attock, Sahiwal, Vehari and a virtual campus. We began with three subjects, including computer sciences, computer engineering and software engineering, but the number has surged to 96. The students total around 38,000. We also have 1,200 PhDs, the most in any educational institution in the country.

COMSATS sends around 100 students abroad for PhD programs on scholarship every year without seeking funds from the government. Our around 800 students have obtained PhD degrees from our university and around 400 from abroad. The recipients of our international scholarship programs are bound by their contracts to join us for at least five years after obtaining degrees.

COMSATS stands out from other universities in the country for producing a record 2,400 international publications a year. The Quaid-i-Azam University is second in the list with around 1,110 publications. We hope to take our tally to 3,000.

I remained the COMSATS rector from 1999 to 2017 and had to leave due to the opposition of some members of the COMSATS governing board. They intended to advertise the post and asked me to appear in the interview like other candidates. I declined saying I’ve done my job and if the board doesn’t want me to continue, I will go away. The board went ahead with the interview plans bringing down the curtain on my term as the rector. During those days, the executive director’s post, which I held during the early days of COMSATS in 1991, fell vacant. I applied for it and got selected. Since then, 2017 to be exact, I’ve been working at COMSATS as the executive director. That’s the story of my return to the executive director office after a gap of 36 years.

All through my career, I never recommended anyone. I appeared for a job interview for the last time in 1985. From 1994 onward, I held top managerial posts. I still remember the day I said my farewell to my professor, he gave me an envelope with a job offer letter, which I didn’t open, and left. On homecoming, I checked the letter. It was a good employment opportunity at the SumoTire company. I got bored stiff within a year to see there is actually no work to do.

At that time, Intel, an American multinational technology company, launched a new computer microprocessor, 286, after making architectural and networking changes to the previous one and using Minimax Algebra developed by me and my colleagues. The company sent me a letter to acknowledge the significance of my accomplishment in the world of computers. Extending a ‘standing job offer’, it said I could join whenever I wanted to.

I feel really proud of my two contributions to the field of computers, including the development of 286 microprocessor, which helped solve multiple equations in one go unlike the past when it happened individually, and active involvement in the internet development by an ARPAnet team during my stay in England. Other members of the team were based in the US and Switzerland. I stayed in contact with them even returning to Pakistan and wrote many protocols for them. That was the basis for my selection for internet development in the country.

It’s unfortunate that our governments haven’t prioritised scientific development. As a nation, we lag far behind the rest of the world in the fields of science and technology. I’m not opposed to the government’s initiative of building houses for the people but prime minister Imran Khan should also focus his attention on the creation of employment opportunities for the youth, especially through investment in science and technology. We have to benefit from modern technology. Our youth are very talented. Many companies in the US want to hire them. What the government needs to do is to train them.

I had a keen desire to join the Pakistan Air Force, but that didn’t happen. The man should resign to the will of the Almighty Allah and should be thankful to Him for His blessings. I’ve no regrets in life; whatever He chose for me was the best. I’ve travelled to many countries for learning, discussion, and sightseeing. I passed the FPSC exam and sat the CSS competitive exam twice and even secured a position in the second attempt but decided not to join the civil service and didn’t look back. I’m really grateful to Almighty Allah for granting me great respect in the profession.

There are many people who contributed significantly to what I’m today. Noted among them is my father, who was an influential person with a strong character and personality, which always impressed me. However, it doesn’t mean that I wanted to be just like him. We’d different dispositions. The things I can bear were unbearable for him. He’d his own set of principles and the people under his influence had to follow them in any case. He migrated to Pakistan from Lucknow city in northern India at the time of Partition.

As the city was a major centre of the India Muslim League’s freedom struggle, my father, like other young family members and residents, enthusiastically participated in such activities and others against the British government.

One night, his younger brother, Syed Muhammad Shoaib Zaidi, a college student, came home late night spinning a heavy padlock on his fingers that produced a little noise, which woke the grandfather up from a sleep. He wondered what that noise was. My uncle replied it came from the lock of a bank he looted along with other young Muslim League activists. Worried, my grandfather asked about the plunder and my uncle replied, “Other guys took it away”. Fearing action by the authorities, my grandfather got that lock disposed of in the nearby River Gomti.

My grandfather got stuck in India at the time of Partition in August 1947 due to my uncle’s studies. However, my father moved to Pakistan. My uncle later finished the law college and emerged as a successful legal practitioner. During those days, securing a passport used to be a tall order both in India and Pakistan. He attested a passport form, which turned out to be fake. There followed litigation and his conviction by a ruthless Hindu judge, who seized his law practice licence and banned him from going out of the country. The year was 1953. The same day, my grandfather suffered a brain haemorrhage causing his death two days later.

My uncle later married a medical doctor, got himself enrolled in a medical college, and became an expert in medico-legal field. He got permission for foreign travel in 1978 and visited us in Pakistan, while I saw him and his family many times during my employment in Bangalore.

Like me, my father, too, was the only male child in his extended family. All others died in early childhood. The family brought him up with extra care to ensure his survival. He had a paan addiction and used to chew as many as 15 betel leaves with katha (red catechu) pasted on it daily. According to his maternal aunt, the addiction dated back to his early childhood. He was just six months old when women visitors, out of their love for him due to his fair complexion and golden curly hair, used to put a pinch of katha in his mouth, and from then on, he developed the habit of chewing paan. He quit it after the fall of Dhaka in December 1971.

East Pakistan supplied betel leaves to West Pakistan before the creation of Bangladesh. Around 56 at that time, my father insisted that as betel leaves grown in East Pakistan were replaced by the Indian ones in Pakistan, he would never chew them. He fulfilled that commitment until his death. That showed his aversion to India. During my stay in India, I invited him to see me and even sent him air tickets, but he never went there.

COMSATS executive director Pervez Butt was also an amazing person. He was good at managing things efficiently yet calmly. He used to finish work at three o’clock and leave the office. Once, the prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, called him on landline but he was away. When he came back, he first settled down in the armchair and then returned the call without panicking.

Lieutenant-General Javed Ashraf Qazi, also the COMSATS executive director, was very particular about cleanliness. He always kept his office table spick and span. Science and technology secretary Javed Masood used to prepare well for meetings. My MSc teacher, Munir Zaidi, was a very handsome man. He had neat handwriting, always took care of personal hygiene, and was very gentle with staff members and visitors. I owe my nice handwriting and good manners to him.

The role of my wife was equally important in my life. She stuck by me through life’s ups and downs. She took care of the family very well and never asked me for anything, not even jewellery. She’s the linchpin of our family life. She never requested me to leave work and come home and strictly followed our unwritten understanding that whenever the need arose, I would be home. We got married in 1978 and have three children, a son and two daughters.

My son is the eldest among the siblings and lives in the UK with his wife and three children. He holds British nationality as well. One of my two daughters holds MBA degree and is doing MPhil in history but is still unmarried at the age of 33. We’re forcing her to get hitched. Like her maternal grandmother, she loves to publish research papers. The other is an architect, who designed a hall of the National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad. She married a close family member, who works as an electrical engineer at the Huawei company in Saudi Arabia. They have a son.

As for hobbies, I’m fond of sports and watch sports channels in my spare time. As a boy, I played badminton and football a lot and perhaps that was to blame for my low grades in the matriculation exam. However, I didn’t play sports later and focused my attention on my studies. These days, I love reading books and spend two to three hours daily in the study.

My advice to the government is that more investment must be made in the sector of science and technology. All nations that take technology seriously prosper, for example, India. In Pakistan, no special attention is given to education or science due to which the economy of our country is suffering.

I stumbled across a torn newspaper page on the ground. It carried an advertisement about BPS-18, BPS-19 and BPS-20 vacancies in the National Centre for Technology Transfer. I had the required education and experience, so I made up my mind to apply for it.

QUOTE

COMSATS stands out from other universities in the country for producing a record 2,400 international publications a year… We hope to take our tally to 3,000.

QUOTE

All nations that take technology seriously prosper, for example, India. In Pakistan, no special attention is given to education or science due to which the economy of our country is suffering.

All nations that take technology seriously prosper, for example, India. In Pakistan, no special attention is given to education or science due to which the economy of our country is suffering.

My son is the eldest among the siblings and lives in the UK with his wife and three children. He holds British nationality as well. One of my two daughters holds MBA degree and is doing MPhil in history but is still unmarried at the age of 33. We’re forcing her to get hitched. Like her maternal grandmother, she loves to publish research papers. The other is an architect, who designed a hall of the National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad. She married a close family member, who works as an electrical engineer at the Huawei company in Saudi Arabia. They have a son.

As for hobbies, I’m fond of sports and watch sports channels in my spare time. As a boy, I played badminton and football a lot and perhaps that was to blame for my low grades in the matriculation exam. However, I didn’t play sports later and focused my attention on my studies. These days, I love reading books and spend two to three hours daily in the study.

My advice to the government is that more investment must be made in the sector of science and technology. All nations that take technology seriously prosper, for example, India. In Pakistan, no special attention is given to education or science due to which the economy of our country is suffering.

I stumbled across a torn newspaper page on the ground. It carried an advertisement about BPS-18, BPS-19 and BPS-20 vacancies in the National Centre for Technology Transfer. I had the required education and experience, so I made up my mind to apply for it.

QUOTE

COMSATS stands out from other universities in the country for producing a record 2,400 international publications a year… We hope to take our tally to 3,000.

QUOTE

All nations that take technology seriously prosper, for example, India. In Pakistan, no special attention is given to education or science due to which the economy of our country is suffering.

All nations that take technology seriously prosper, for example, India. In Pakistan, no special attention is given to education or science due to which the economy of our country is suffering.

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