Rehman Sobhan

Rehman Sobhan (Bengali: রেহমান সোবহান; born 12 March 1935) is a Bangladeshi economist.

Regarded as one of the country's top public thinkers, he is the founder and the current chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), an organisation active in open public discussions of policy issues, particularly in the area of governance.

Sobhan is an icon of the Bangladeshi independence movement for his role as a spokesman of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh in the United States during the Bangladesh Liberation War. He was awarded the Independence Day Award, Bangladesh's highest civilian honour, in 2008. He was also part of the first Planning Commission of Bangladesh and he later served as the planning adviser for the first caretaker government of Bangladesh.

Sobhan's father, Khandker Fazle Sobhan, was a graduate of Presidency College, Kolkata and one of the first Muslims to qualify to attend Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. After some time he rose to become a ranked officer in the Indian Police Service. Sobhan's mother, Hashmat Ara Begum, was a niece of Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin, the Governor General of Pakistan during 1948–51 and Prime Minister of Pakistan during 1951–53. Sobhan went to St. Paul's School, Darjeeling at the age of seven and completed his Senior Cambridge examination in 1950. He then attended Aitchison College in Lahore for two years. He went on to Cambridge University to earn his bachelor's degree. In late 1966, Sobhan went to the LSE for his graduate studies but returned, without completing his degree, to Dhaka in March 1969 after the fall of the Ayub regime.

He is now 90 years old.

He has had 3 children with Salma Sobhan, including newspaper editor Zafar Sobhan of Dhaka Tribune.