Wednesday, September 16, 2026
- Article
- Comments (0)
The men who shaped India's economy
GW | New Delhi, March 1, 2012 17:15
Tags : P C Mahalanobis | Indraprasad Gordhanbhai Patel |
Tags : P C Mahalanobis | Indraprasad Gordhanbhai Patel |
P C Mahalanobis
(1893-1972)
An applied statistician, he is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to the design of large scale sample surveys.
His most important contributions are related to the systematic collection and analyses of data on various socio-economic variables; the second relates to his contribution to India’s national economic planning and establishing the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931. He introduced the concept of pilot surveys and advocated the usefulness of sampling methods. Early surveys began between 1937 to 1944 and included topics such as consumer expenditure, tea-drinking habits, public opinion, crop acreage and plant disease. Later as a member of Planning Commission he contributed prominently.
He emphasised industrialisation on the basis of a two-sector model his variant of Wassily Leontief’s Input-Output model, the Mahalanobis model, was employed in the Second Five Year Plan, which worked towards rapid industrialisation of India. With other colleagues, he played a key role in the development of a statistical infrastructure. He encouraged a project to assess de-industrialization in India and correct some previous census methodology errors and entrusted this project to an US economist Daniel Thorner working on India.
Vinayak Mahadeo Dandekar
(1920-1995)
He was trained as statistician at ISI and was Director at the Pune based Institute of Economics and Politics. Later he set up the Indian school of Political Economy at Lonavala in 1962 to train local level politicians. He became a chairman of the National Sample Survey Organisation in 1970 and produced a monograph titled `Poverty in India’ in 1971 along with his colleague N Rath at the Gokhale Institute and addressed the question of measurement of poverty for various states based on the consumption expenditure needed to sustain minimum caloric intake. Despite being the member of Right Wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Dandekar wrote a number of articles on problems of surplus cattle in India that he attributed to religious ban on cow slaughter. He argued strongly for culling of unwanted animals and provoked a huge controversy in 1960. This was followed by a legal ban on cow slaughter.
L K Jha
(1913–1988)
He wore several hats that of an eminent economist, a distinguished administrator, an able diplomat and a sage counselor. He had a significant role in shaping the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 which made the concept of mixed economy operational and provided stimulus for the country’s industrial development.
As Chairman of the Economic Administration Reforms Commission, he was responsible for changing the direction of economic policy towards controlled deregulation as a preliminary step to full liberalisation. Furthermore, as Chairman of the Indirect Taxation Enquiry Committee, he made numerous valuable and enduring contributions to the improvement of India’s fiscal system.
He effectively pleaded the cause of India and other developing countries in many international fora and was a highly respected member of the Brandt Commission which advocated a new world economic order in which the developingcountries would have a more equitable share.
Prof. Raj Krishna
(1926-1985)
He popularised the phrase ‘Hindu rate of growth’ in the seventies, during the period of increasing controls and slowing growth rate during 1980’s. It was a polemical device to intend to draw attention to 3.5 per cent growth rate India experienced since it became free and despite changes in governments, wars, famines, floods etc. A year after he was appointed as the member of the Agricultural Price Commission 1965, he resigned and wrote a dissent note calling free movement of food grains and dismantling the food zones.
Kakkadan Nandanath Raj
(1924-2010)
KN Raj played an important role in India’s planned development, drafting sections of India’s first Five Year Plan, specifically the introductory chapter when he was only 26 years old. He was a veteran economist in the Planning Commission. He worked out a plan to raise India’s rate of savings in the post-Second World War period when the country was in need of foreign aid. He computed India’s Balance of Payments for the first time for the Reserve Bank of India. Raj was an advisor to several prime ministers from Jawaharlal Nehru to P.V. Narasimha Rao. Dr. Raj was a Keynesian economist. He studied the application of Keynesian monetary theory in Indian context.
Amartya Sen
(born 1933)
An Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society’s poorest members, Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food. He helped to create the United Nations Human Development Index.
Suresh Dandopanth Tendulkar
(1939-2011)
He headed a committee in 2009 to look into the people living under poverty line in India. Prof. Tendulkar was known for his extensive work on “Credit and Privatisation policies” and “Indian development issues and policies”, including liberalisation and globalisation. He was also a part-time member of the National Statistical Commission (2000–01), the first “Disinvestment Commission” (1996–99), and the Fifth “Central Pay Commission” (1994–97).
In 2009, this committee came out with a new method to calculate poverty. According to this method, the number of the poor in India in 2004–05 rose from 27.5 per cent of the total population to 37.2 per cent. In the past, poverty was estimated by looking at a limited view of money required for stipulated minimum calorie intake by individuals. But Tendulkar committee moved to a wider definition, including spending on food as well as education, health, light (electricity), clothing and footwear.
Dr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy
(born 1941)
He is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1964 batch who served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) (India’s central bank) from September 2003 to September 5, 2008. As Governor, he saw his job of ensuring that Indian banks did not get too caught up in the bubble mentality. He banned the use of bank loans for the purchase of raw land, and sharply curtailed securitizations and derivatives, and essentially prohibited off-balance sheet financing. He increased risk weightings on commercial buildings and shopping mall construction and increased bank reserve requirements. Less well-discussed is his work on rural banking, particularly on reviving co-operative banks and his focus on the common man. His term was marked by an emphasis on financial inclusion with the aid of information technology. He recently authored a book titled “India And The Global Financial Crisis: Managing Money and Finance”. He is widely consulted on many financial issues by institutions both in India as well as the world over.
Indraprasad Gordhanbhai Patel
(1924–2005)
An economist and administrator, he joined the RBI as Governor after serving as secretary in the ministry of finance and thereafter at the UNDP. His tenure witnessed the demonetisation of high denomination notes as well as the ‘gold auctions’ conducted by the bank on behalf of Government of India. During his tenure, six private sector banks were nationalised, targets for priority sector lending introduced, and the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporations were merged, and a departmental reorganisation was undertaken in the bank. He played an active role in availing of the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility in 1981 due to balance of payments difficulties. This represented the largest arrangement in IMF’s history at the time.
Chakravarthy Rangarajan
(born 1932)
Rangarajan is an Indian economist and a distinguished former Member of Parliament and Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Currently, he is the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. He is also the Chairman of the Madras School of Economics, and the Founding Chairman of the CR Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
(born 1943)
An Indian economist and civil servant, he is currently the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. He was previously the first director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund. As the government’s chief policy adviser, Ahluwalia is instrumental in charting India’s way ahead and influences policy decisions from economics to education reforms. He has been a driving force in the liberalisation programme
close two decades. Also, he has been influencing the budgetary allocations to states and ministries.
Issue Dated: Feb 5, 2017
