IBA was a survival course that deliberately threw many obstacles in the path of its students to train them for the biggest survival course that lay ahead: life itself.
ByAli Habib | August 2025
Era: Early 1986 or thereabouts
Location: Checkpoint #1 manned by boys affiliated with one political party, just beyond the entrance of a closed-down Karachi University
Gun-toting boy: “Ruko! kahan ja rahay ho?
Me: IBA jaa raha hoon; hourly hai (on my about-to-fall-apart motorcycle)
Boy, dismissively, to his posse: Jaany dou salay kou, IBA wala hai.
A minute or so later!
Location: Checkpoint #2 manned by boys affiliated with the opposing political party, close to the IBA campus, a few hundred meters beyond the first checkpoint
Gun-toting boy: Ruko! Kahan ja rahay ho?
Me: IBA jaa raha hoon; hourly hai (on my about-to-fall-apart motorcycle)
2nd Boy, dismissively, to his posse: Jaany dou salay kou, IBA wala hai.
The above interaction that I had with a bunch of boys, roughly my age, summarizes an entire era in Karachi’s life that began in the mid-1980s and continued unabated, with various degrees of intensity, for the next 30 years. My four years at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), overlapped perfectly with when both Karachi and, by extension (or was it the other way around) Karachi University (where IBA was/is located), got entangled in a downward spiral; a spiral that changed the entire psyche of this great metropolis. My time at the IBA was a transformative period for all those who studied there; we spent this era as its backdrop.
However, this piece is not a commentary about that era but my time at the IBA during that era.
I was a non-serious student, and here, I am stretching the meaning of the word non-serious. I was terrible in Science and took Humanities in intermediate, a stereotyped route to a ho-hum life in that era, when only being a doctor or an engineer defined being accomplished. A cousin of mine suggested that I take this test at a place called the IBA and pursue a degree called MBA. Few, even in my family, had attempted an MBA degree or tried for an institution like the IBA. With nothing to lose, I took the aptitude test…and I cleared. A total of 72 boys and girls made it from the over 2,200 who applied (an acceptance rate of 3%). Four years down the road, some 40 of that initial cohort of 72 graduated with an MBA degree in hand.
In their isolation, the above events and facts mean nothing; but, taken together, they weave a story that might resonate with many IBA graduates, certainly of that era.
Calling IBA an academic institution would be under-representing its full import. IBA was a survival course that deliberately threw many obstacles in the path of its students to train them for the biggest survival course that lay ahead: life itself. IBA was ruthless and demanding, made no exceptions, was mostly unforgiving, brooked no excuses, and gave no second chances. Just like life, to succeed, it demanded from its students unrelenting intellectual alertness, physical fitness, and mental toughness. In the 1980s, the IBA prepared us for life like a few institutions in Pakistan did. Its product served in Pakistan and abroad with distinction…all at a throwaway price.
From the mid-1980s onwards, Karachi was wracked by political violence. I lived in an area of Karachi that was one of the most affected by the political upheavals. To restore calm, authorities would impose a curfew. In a macabre reflection of this wonderful city, the parts of Karachi that were not under curfew continued to function as if nothing had happened. IBA was in the unaffected parts of Karachi and worked on a simple principle: it would not close for a day, no matter what. Let this not go unappreciated; keeping IBA working every day, irrespective of the city situation or the university situation, was no small achievement. And we are not talking about a one-off scenario, but an uncertainty spread over the years. If a student missed his/her classes and did so thrice in a semester, the student would fail that course. You could not afford to fail any course, as that brought you one step closer to the dreaded fate of expulsion from the IBA, a common phenomenon.
IBA made me believe in merit. It made me believe that merit can be practiced in Pakistan. That way, IBA was an island of excellence in the midst of all that was around it.
In my life at the IBA, the clashing duality of the curfew and the IBA’s strict attendance policy played starring roles. IBA did not care if I could not make it to a class because of curfew. Unfair as it seemed in those days, unwittingly, it inculcated in me a can-do-no-matter-what attitude. It taught me that rather than sit and moan about the unfairness of it all, I must step up and find a way around it. I developed a reliable regimen of when to ‘escape’ from the affected areas before the curfew held me back. I found numerous friends who would host me for the curfew days. I discovered how to talk to law enforcement personnel to let me in and out of a curfew zone. I discovered narrow alleys where I could slip out of my area undetected, onward to the IBA. Curfew became a metaphor for life that IBA taught me to navigate. Some 40 years later, even the idea of being unable to go to work for any reason is laughable. IBA taught me resilience; it developed in me a sense of ingenuity (jugaar).
IBA was known across the country for its disciplined approach to academic life. The interaction that I describe at the opening of this reflection illustrates that. Why would I knowingly ride into a warzone resembling Karachi University and straight into the checkpoint of a set of feuding students? They would then dismissively let me go because they knew that only an IBA student would dare approach them for a passage through; for that student, life was too focused on what he/she had set out to achieve, at the exclusion of all that was happening around him/her, feuding students included.
IBA made me believe in merit. It made me believe that merit can be practiced in Pakistan. That way, IBA was an island of excellence in the midst of all that was around it. All 70 of us who made it past the entrance exam knew we got in via a very transparent and objective process. We also knew that to stay in the IBA, we had to maintain a certain level of academic achievement, or the IBA would not think twice about asking us to leave; some 30 of us parted ways with the IBA for that reason primarily. The pace was relentless, even if you somehow mastered it. The irritatingly monthly ‘hourlies’ came upon us with the regularity that rain comes in the tropics. As the name suggests, these hour-long tests were part of our overall assessment. Our lives revolved around them. Looking back, the hourlies unwittingly prepared us for a professional life that is a treadmill; you have two options: either keep running or step off. The treadmill won’t slow down for you.
Some 40 years later, I would like to believe that those four years at this one-of-a-kind institution run by a one-of-a-kind dean, Dr. Wahab, in this one-of-a-kind city, prepared me well for the obstacle course of the biggest survival test of all: life.
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