Shoaib Sultan Khan

Shoaib Sultan Khan NI (born 11 July 1933) is one of the pioneers of rural development programmes in Pakistan.

As a CSP Officer, he worked with the Government of Pakistan for 25 years, later on he served Geneva based Aga Khan Foundation for 12 years, then UNICEF and UNDP for 14 years.

Since his retirement, he has been involved with the Rural Support Programmes (RSPs) of Pakistan full-time, on voluntary basis.

Today, the Rural Support Programmes have helped form 297,000 community organisations in 110 districts including two Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

Shoaib Sultan Khan was born on 11 July 1933 in Moradabad, British India; a town now in Uttar Pradesh, India.

His grandfather, Sultan Ahmad Beg, had won a coveted position in the state civil service of United Provinces, in the days of the British Raj.

He maintained a large household that embraced his children and grandchildren.

Shoaib obtained his Master of Arts degree in English from Lucknow University and subsequently completed a Public Administration Course at the University of Cambridge.

He has a Bachelor of Laws degree from Peshawar University, in addition to which he has also done academic work at Birmingham University and at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford.

He started his career as a lecturer in 1953, but joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1955 and remained in it till 1978.

Eventually rising through the posts of Deputy Director of Civil Service Academy, Deputy Commissioner Kohat and Peshawar, Commissioner of Karachi Division, Secretary Department of Health, Education and Social Welfare in the Government of North West Frontier Province and Director for the Pakistan Academy of Rural Development.

His career in rural development started in 1959 when he came in contact with Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan.

Dr. Khan asked him to follow three simple principles used in Germany by Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen – get the oppressed peasants to organize and identify a leadership and then acquire the capacity to acquire capital, have savings and upgrade human skills.

That conceptual package revolutionized Germany.

Even the Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (now just BRAC) came out of this simple concept.

Under Dr. Khan's guidance he established the Daudzai Pilot Project of the Integrated Rural Development Programme in 1972 on the pattern of Comilla Project.

In 1978, he was deputed to Nagoya, Japan, as a consultant to the United Nations Center for Regional Development.

As UNICEF consultant, he worked in Sri Lanka during 1979 and 1982 on the Mahaweli Ganga Development Project.

By the mid 1980s Shoaib had been successful in convincing Sartaj Aziz to lobby to set up the National Rural Support Programme.

In December 1982, the Aga Khan Foundation asked him to head the newly founded Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), a citizen sector organisation that targets poverty-stricken villages primarily in northern Pakistan (Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral) and engages their inhabitants in development programmes.

AKRSP was established with strong personal interest of His Highness the Aga Khan in its success.

The same year Shoaib became the first and founding general manager of the newly established NGO.

At the outset, Shoaib obtained commitment from the Aga Khan Foundation for long-term financial support of the program.

The AKRSP model developed after trial and error in collaboration with 100,000 mountain farmers.

This model subverted the conventional model of social development, which assumed that either central government or outside agencies would lift people out of poverty.

And involved the local communities in the development initiative through an approach that was participatory rather than bureaucratic.

The success of the AKRSP model was replicated in many countries and at the request of the United Nations Development Programme, he undertook South Asian Poverty Alleviation programme (SAPAP), setting up demonstration plots on its pattern in India, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Islamabad also started the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) and the provincial programmes replicating the same model.

In 1987 Chief Minister of N.W.F.P Arbab Jehangir invited Shoaib Sultan to start the Sarhad Rural Support Programme.

He has received the United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Award in 1989, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1990, the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1992, the WWF Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Award in 1994, "Man of the Year" Rotary International (Pakistan) Gold Medal in 2005, Sitara-e-Eisaar and Hilal-i-Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan in 2007.

During the 1990s, when Sartaj Aziz was Finance Minister, Shoaibs interaction with him resulted in the establishment of the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund.

In 1993 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif impressed with Shoaib Sultans international recognition donated 500 million rupees to the National Rural Support Programme.

When Shoaib came to India in 1994 as part of the UNDP project, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao asked him to test the project in Andhra Pradesh, where it took off in three districts — Kurnool, Anantapur and Mehboobnagar.

At the end of the U.N pilot, on Shoaibs suggestion, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, agreed to continue it.

In this context, India launched a national programme called National Rural Livelihood Mission based on the SAPAP principles of development to benefit over 300 million poor.

In 1997 he influenced Chief Minister of Punjab Shehbaz Sharif to commit 500 million rupees for the Punjab Rural Support Programme.

In 2009 he was elected as Senior Ashoka Fellow.

He has written numerous research papers and books.

In 2009, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for "Unleashing the power and potential of the poor".

In 2019 he was awarded Nishan-e-Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan.