Syed Tanwir Husain Naqvi, former Chairman, National Reconstruction Bureau of Pakistan

General Tanwir Naqvi retired from the Pakistan Army in the rank of three-star general in December 1995. Graduating from the Pakistan Military Academy with the Sword of Honour into a tank regiment in 1961, he acquired two masters’ degrees in defense, strategic, and war studies, and decorations for exceptional devotion to duty in peace and war. General Naqvi chose to relinquish his coveted post of Chairman, National Reconstruction Bureau after the national elections in October 2002, but continues to enjoy national prominence as a dynamic thought-leader with a flair for change management.

General Naqvi rose to national prominence during the first three years of General Parvez Musharraf’s rule, when he created and led a new institutional change-management organisation, the National Reconstruction Bureau, to serve as the think tank of the new National Security Council, the supreme policy making organ of the state, and bring Pakistan Government’s structures and systems at par with the current times and to preclude any future ingress of the military into the political field. In the capacity of Chairman, National Reconstruction Bureau, General Naqvi replaced the existing 200-year old colonial structure and system of top-down coercive rule over the people by a privileged bureaucracy, with a new people-centered, rights-and-responsibility-based, service-delivery-oriented system of transparent bottom-up governance at the district level, tailored to the requirements of the emerging environment of the 21st century.

General Naqvi developed integrated proposals for structural and systemic changes in the country’s Constitution to make parliamentary democracy more sustainable in Pakistan’s socio-politico-cultural milieu. These changes were later adopted by Parliament as constitutional amendments.