Dr Amal Uthum Herat, one of the leading lights making up the top brains of the Central Bank got extinguished permanently last week. He was the Deputy Governor overlooking the financial system stability at the time. In addition, he was Chairman of both the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka and the Credit Information Bureau of Sri Lanka, two responsible positions he held simultaneously.
Having completed his primary and secondary education at the St Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, young Herat joined the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, to read for a special degree in Mathematics and Statistics.
Dr Amal Uthum Herat |
However, the ethnic disturbances that broke out in Jaffna at that time did not permit him to complete the degree at that university. He, along with others in his batch, was relocated at the University of Sri Jayawardenepura to complete the degree programme. His academic brilliance was such that he passed out from the university armed with a First Class Honours Degree in Statistics. Like other youngsters of his generation, he had by that time completed another professional examination: the Final Examination of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK.
He joined the Central Bank as a young staff officer with these double qualifications. Then, he proceeded to Purdue University in USA and completed a Master’s degree and a Doctorate in Economics specialising in financial economics.
After returning to the Central Bank, he worked as a senior economist for sometime, got promoted as the Deputy Director of Economic Research and finally, was appointed to the prestigious post of Director of Economic Research. He was then released to the IMF to function as the Alternate Executive Director of the Executive Board representing India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan. After a three year stint at the Fund, he returned to the Bank as an Assistant Governor and in May 2009, was elevated to the post of Deputy Governor.
Dr Herat was a combination of many disciplines: mathematics, statistics, finance, accountancy, economics, philosophy, religion, history and many more. A brief conversation with him will leave any stranger with awe, respect and love for the rare intellect, fittingly conditioned by modesty and humility, which he normally displays. He had the remarkable ability of patiently listening to the view - points of others, quickly synthesising the main arguments and approving or refuting them without offending or hurting their feelings. He was a master debater, mesmerising preacher and spell – binding speaker. Anyone who had listened to him once would love to do so again and again. Many generations of students who had studied under him at the universities, professional bodies and numerous other places of learning will vouch for this fact.
Dr Herat was a late entrant to the science of economics, having embraced the ways of that dismal science only after joining the Central Bank. Yet, true to his innate skill of learning any new subject to its core, he became a master of that science with a profound knowledge of the philosophy on which it is based. His multi-disciplinary background would have helped him to understand the foundation of economics much more easily. When all of us were making silly mistakes in our reading of the world events, he was able to guide us to the correct position with examples drawn from religion, politics, philosophy and even mathematics. He was a firm believer of the free market economy system, free trade and individual liberty as pillars for creating wealth and prospering sustainable growth. His public lectures, discussions and writings display his unambiguous position on these subjects.
The writer had the advantage of being associated with Dr Herat very closely for nearly two and a half decades and picking up wisdom from him regularly. At the Monetary Policy Committee of which he was the founding secretary initially and later an important member, he made no bones about the true culprit of unsustainable inflation in the country: reckless government expenditure. The papers he submitted to the Committee were all lucid, to the point and sharp on the policy recommendations.
At the Committee meetings, there were heated debates; yet, he was able to carry his view with proper explanation and clarification backed by sound logic.
He was a person of exemplary character and a living example for all of us to emulate. The writer recalls that once when there was a thumping salary increase in the Bank, the ordinary mortals like us could not hide our over-joy and were openly boisterous about it. Dr Herat, having watched us for sometime, had only one comment to make: ‘I don’t know what I could do with this salary; I wish if I could return it to the Bank’. It showed the frugal living he made satisfying only the bare necessities of life. When he was the Alternate Executive Director of the Fund, every time he returned to Sri Lanka, he presented the writer with a new book. When he was offered payment, he refused saying that he was disseminating the knowledge among many through the writer because the ideas in the books could be used by the writer in his lectures and writings. That was the magnanimous character of Dr Herat.
Dr Herat had only friends and not enemies. When the news of his falling sick and being hospitalised was heard, everyone was concerned. The writer got frantic calls and emails from his friends from all throughout the globe asking about his health. There would have been others too who would have been similarly contacted. During the two weeks he was fighting for his life alone on a hospital bed, the whole central bank got into action irrespective of religious, ethnic or cadre differences. Religious observances were held daily to invoke the blessings of deities for a quick recovery. Central Bank employees rallied in large numbers to donate blood for him.
At the funeral on October 25, the Mount Lavinia Cemetery was practically flooded by present Central Bank employees, past employees and all those from banks, universities and professional bodies to pay their last respects to him. An unsaid message was visible on all their grieving faces. That was that ‘Dr Herat was a superior human being standing above all of them’.
As a human being, Dr Herat led a practically worry-free life. To the knowledge of the writer, he had only two worries, both relating to his name. The first one was the long list of initials in his name (numbering six) that troubled him every time he filled up immigration forms that did not have sufficient space to record his full name.
The second one was the spelling of his surname ‘Herat’ which the computer automatically changed to ‘Heart’. Perhaps, the inanimate computer would have been correct. We as well as he would have wrongly spelt his surname all this time when he was truly a big ‘Heart’ for all of us.
W.A. Wijewardena,
(recently, retired Senior Deputy Governor of the Central Bank) |
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