(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)
“I am not qualified”
Noted social worker Ehsanullah Ehsaan has decided to accept the federal government’s offer to be a member of the Economic Advisory Council, albeit with certain reservations.
“I have decided to accept one of the three positions vacated recently,” he said, at the launch of collection of poetry written by him.
“With some reservations, of course. I am afraid I am not a qualified economist.”
“I didn’t take much to the Dismal Science,” he said.
“It was always the Humanities for me.”
“Social work, of course, remained, my focus throughout,” he said.
“And I chose to stay with it throughout.”
“But perhaps we need a human element at this body of economists,” he said in response to a question about why he was chosen.
“Maybe the government felt that economists get too jaded with time and a career revolving around nothing but numbers – no offence to my economist friends, some of them are quite sensitive – and that the advisory council needed someone with demonstrable empathy and humanity.”
“For that, I am humbled that they chose me.”
