Entering Ishtiaq Baig’s house, I could not help but admire the very tastefully done interior. As I walked by the entrance and the lounge area, I saw the house was beautifully segmented according to various cultures. I could see Moroccan, Afghan, far Eastern and contemporary European   corners – Buddha monuments and Turkish rugs in the rooms. I was led to his study room and there again, I looked around and I could see a gazillion pictures of Ishtiaq Baig with people familiar and unfamiliar to me. My first sentence to Ishtiaq Baig after exchanging greetings was in praise of his place. “Well I am a collector; wherever I go I look for the best piece for my home. That Buddha that you see has an interesting story. I was bringing this over via Dubai. The Dubai customs stopped me from taking the Buddha into their country, saying they do not allow idols like these in their country. I tried explaining to them that this was for decorative purpose only, but they didn’t listen. So I had to ship it to Pakistan directly from there,” Ishtiaq Baig told us.

“Would you like to look around?” he asked me. Of course, the little that I had seen had intrigued me enough, so I agreed to see around this place. And like the little I had seen, the rest of the place did not disappoint me either. From this music room to the Venice-inspired swimming pool and the sitting areas, all looked remarkable.

“I virtually live out of a suit case. I got to travel a lot for work, and all I do while traveling is pick up every thing I like.” As he showed me Iqbal Mehdi’s paintings hanging in his house, we walked back to his study room. “You see a lot of Moroccan and Middle Eastern influence in my house, starting from tea to the chandeliers.”
 

I started to wonder how he developed this love for Morocco. “While I was young I used to love the movie Casablanca. I used to love that movie and whenever I’d watch it. It would tell my self that I must see this place and culture,” said Ishtiaq.

Ishtiaq’s parents belonged to Dehli, India, and they moved to Pakistan after partition. His father had a textile business there, but during migration they lost every thing and moved empty-handed. Ishtiaq was born in Karachi. His father started off with his old textile business in Pakistan as well. “In 1971, when Bhutto nationalized the industry in Pakistan, like every other industrialist, we suffered as well. So my entire family decided to move to Dubai back then. In Dubai we started off with some other businesses, and we moved back after ten years. This was when things started settling down a bit. Dubai was home for us, but the textile business was booming again in Pakistan, so we moved back and got into a spinning business initially. Today we’ve a spinning and denim mill. We still have business in Dubai, Morocco and Turkey. Around 200 people are employed with our group.”

Ishtiaq remembers Karachi as a different place where he was a child. He feels that Karachi has changed a lot, over the year for a lot of reason. “As kids, we would easily stay out late and go to school on bikes … it was much more secure back then. After the Afghan war and after a lot of Afghan’s moved into Pakistan, things have not been the same,” said Ishtiaq with concern. “The law and order situation in Karachi has not stabilized as such.

Things get better for a little while and then something bad happens again. It used to be the city of lights and glory, and people now feel a bit afraid of moving around freely,” he added.

As a child, he recalls that his family was a very closely knitted unit. He was very close to his father, and father would talk about various things to him. ”I’ve four sisters and an elder brother. I am the youngest brother, so I used to spend a lot of time with him (his father), talking about his experience, especially the once he had while migrating to Pakistan. He would tell me how much everyone suffered and the cost we all had to pay for our own piece of land,” said Ishtiaq.

He recalls one of the things his father used to tell him all the time, that was w/o being bothered about the tough times, one should do his/her thing: good times always follow bad times.     

“Business in pre-partition India was good, and it was tough decision for my family to leave everything behind. It wasn’t easy, but then they moved in the hope of better times. It was the matter of faith for them,” said Ishtiaq.

“I was always told by my father that Pakistan has a bright future, provided we get good leadership. We are a blessed country. Our land is so fertile and versatile that hardly any other country has (what we have). I am an optimist. Even when things went really bad for our business post 9/11, I still believed we would have better times. People kept telling me that it’s over for us, but see for your self how well we’ve come out of it.

Terrorism has been one of our main concerns after the incident, but I feel that terrorism is easy to combat. I am sure if we provide people with an education, shelter and decent jobs that can generate decent income; none would be inclined towards terrorism.”

He feels that increase in poverty and unemployment in the country overshadowed a lot of other good things that are happening. He believes in empowering the common man.

“When Pakistan got independence, we didn’t get any industry. All the industry went to Pakistan called SITE. All the industry that u see today in post-independence. Two things in our history have affected us really badly. If we look back at the Ayub era, Pakistan was at par with India and china. We should take advantage of that situation and moved fast ahead, but we lost that chance and look at where both these countries are. Whenever I pass by that factory inaugurated by Quaid-e-Azam, I think that the man had a vision. He knew what he can be good at … that is why he put up a textile industry first,” said Ishtiaq.    

He feels that the area where we are lacking is nothing but infrastructure. He feels we’ve all the resources, but if anyone wants to set up a new unit today, the infrastructure wont be able to support the unit as far as basic necessities like gas and electricity are concerned.

“Take Karachi for example, it’s a big city, but the roads and the ports need a lot of development. We keep asking investors to come and invest n our country without providing them any facilities. We expect them to take their money and then give them the facilities; this doesn’t work like this.

Our costs of doing a business have increased tremendously. Every few days, our financial cost takes a hike, which is resulting in higher prices of our products. We need to understand that Pakistan is not the first choice of the international buyer even in textiles. Buyers go to three other places before hitting Pakistan . . . this means that we are already surviving on the leftovers, so we need to do a lot more to attract business,” Ishtiaq told

He said that banks’ interest rates also needed to stabilize. “Since no industry can survive without the banking system’s support, we need to have a better understanding, amongst us. Banks are the beneficiaries right now, and the industry is suffering.”

He feels that the president and the prime minister of Pakistan are the best and the most salesmen for the country. He appreciates how both of these are knocking every investor’s door to bring in business to Pakistan.

He feels that the system needs to support them. “I remember when I went to China last time, I was with my seller and while we were on the road, we were stopped by a policeman. He came to us and said something to my Chinese partner. My partner explained something to him, and he just let us go. I asked my partner what he had said he told me that he ‘policeman wanted to fine me, but I told him that I’ve a foreign buyer with me … what impression will he get?’. He said that the policeman apologized and let us go. Now the point is that they have a culture where they understand the need for foreign investment and know how to value it,” said Ishtiaq.

Ishtiaq said that we were suffering from a huge trade deficit. He said that this was a very alarming situation, which was going unnoticed. He feels that we’ve to bridge the gap between our imports and exports; otherwise it will ruin our currency. He said that our expenses are lot higher than our income, and that’s why we are desperately suffering off our assets. “In Pakistan, you can find little things like imported juices at almost the same prices as local products. Who would want to buy a local product in such a situation?” he questioned. He said that if the cost of business was brought down, this thing alone can make a humongous difference.

Ishtiaq is complete family man and love spending time with his mother and brothers. His own son is in England now a days and he believes that it is important that you let your children be independent. “On our off days, our mother cooks for all of us siblings. She knows what each of us like to eat. And then we all love spending time at our beach house. I live by the rule that Sundays are for family only, so I make sure that I don’t meet anyone else or keep any appointments for Sunday.”

He also has a hobby of collecting car number plates and already has a good variety collected. 

This column has been read 733 times