Amjad Khan Chowdhury was the name of a successful, development-minded industrial leader. He put two things to work for the country's economic development: the professional discipline of the army and his own personal foresight.
By founding Rangpur Foundry Limited in 1981 and the agro-based industrial and commercial enterprise PRAN in 1985, he breathed new life into this country's thinking about industry.
He always moved forward by learning from life. In his own industrial world Amjad Khan Chowdhury was like any other worker, and age never stood in his way. He constantly dreamed of people busy at work, so every venture of his meant jobs for many.
Jobs for thousands, contracts for farmers
In his industrial garden he steadily added 72,000 people as salaried workers and brought 80,000 farmers under contract. More than 20 lakh people at home and abroad benefit from his work.
Amjad Khan Chowdhury was the country's biggest organiser of turning farm produce into industrial products. It is said that what people in this country eat and use every day is closely tied to PRAN, the enterprise of his dreams.
He turned every fruit and crop grown in this country into industrial goods, and these products now number more than 1,500. Yet behind all this work, Amjad Khan, the man at the heart of PRAN, always wanted to keep himself in the background.
A dream of milk self-sufficiency
He dreamed each dream with strong self-confidence. The sector closest to his heart was Bangladesh's dairy industry. He dreamed that we would achieve self-sufficiency in milk by 2020. He had said: "We will achieve self-sufficiency in milk by 2020. For that we only need government cooperation. Not aid, mind you, cooperation. We don't want money. If the government looks kindly on this and makes some changes at the policy level, it is possible."
Leaving so many unfulfilled dreams and plans behind, he has passed away by the inevitable law of nature. But he will live on forever in the industrial and food products that have spread to every town and village of this country and to countries around the world.
Amjad Khan Chowdhury was not just a businessman but a socially committed person.
Source: Shykh Seraj. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.
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