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| K.N.
Raj: Outstanding economist, institution builder, beacon
for young people |
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(Published
in the Indian Express, 11 February 2010) |
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K.N. Raj
(1924 - 2010) |
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The
years after independence saw a number of outstanding
young men and women throw their hearts and bodies into
building a new India. K.N. Raj was a giant of that generation.
Today when careerists and those who put their self-interest
above everything else rule the day, it is important
to stress how K.N. Raj and others of his kind, who could
very easily have made their names anywhere in the world,
were fired with passion for just one thing: contributing
to a modern and equitable order in independent India.
Professor Raj was many things: an outstanding economist,
an excellent teacher, a builder of institutions, a beacon
for young people |
and, not least, someone who could think well ahead of
his time.
The first half of his working life was spent outside
Kerala. After obtaining his PhD from the London School
of Economics, it was in the drafting of the First Plan
that Raj first made his mark. While it is the Second
Plan that gets noticed by all for the contribution of
Mahalanobis, in many ways it was the First Plan that
was the trailblazer - and Raj was one among a small
group of professional economists who contributed to
its making. That was when Raj became a Nehruvian, something
he remained, I think, to the very end of his life.
Yet, it was in the new Delhi School of Economics, where
Raj became a professor in his early thirties, that he
really shone. For more than a decade, Raj was one of
the stars who gave the DSE its brilliance - attracting
fine minds like Amartya Sen to join the faculty, electrifying
batch after batch of students and contributing immensely
to the cross-national exchange of ideas among the economists
of the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia.
That was also the time that Raj sowed the seeds of many
new ways of understanding rural India, seeds that were
subsequently developed by younger professionals in articles
and books on inter-locked markets, under-employment,
land reforms etc. Raj was also one of the first economists
of independent India to acquire international status
- and, rare for today, his interests were not confined
to economics.
Raj was for a while very close to Indira Gandhi as well,
but differed with her and her advisers both on the devaluation
of 1966 and, more famously, a decade later when he was
critical of the Emergency in public. In the late 1960s,
he was briefly vice-chancellor of Delhi University.
That was not the happiest of times, but at the height
of his influence and perhaps power he then took a decision
which in some respects resembles the actions of the
lead character in the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi's
Structure of Crystals - he walked out of the capital
and the corridors of power; he had also been a star
in the salons of the Delhi of the time.
Arguing that it was unhealthy for teaching and research
in economics to be concentrated in Delhi, Raj moved
to what was then the backwaters - Trivandrum. There,
with the help of the then chief minister, Achutha Menon,
and a small group of outstanding talents in economics
from all over, Raj established the Centre for Development
Studies (CDS). It was CDS that researched and made popular
the notion of the ''Kerala Model'' of development. It
could also be said that the early research in CDS contributed
to the international/ United Nations' evolution of the
idea of ''human development''. For a while the CDS was
perhaps the most exciting centre for the study of economics
in India and it was also CDS which brought to prominence
the work of that other outstanding personality, the
architect Laurie Baker, who Raj sought out to design
and supervise the construction of the centre and popularise
''low cost'' architecture.
On a personal note I must write here that I was privileged
to be a student at the CDS and also a PhD student of
Raj's, but perhaps what must have been a great source
of joy was my subsequent association with the Economic
and Political Weekly. Raj was associated first with
the Economic Weekly and was one of founder-editor Sachin
Chaudhuri's preferred writers in the 1950s and 1960s.
Then when Economic Weekly closed, it is said that Raj
was one of those who convinced Sachin Chaudhuri to revive
the journal and, I hear, gave it its current name as
well. Raj was a founder-trustee of the Sameeksha Trust,
which publishes the EPW, and remained on its board to
the very end. Raj was a friend of Sachin Chaudhuri,
and it was also a student of his from the DSE, Krishna
Raj, who was editor of EPW for 35 years and built up
the institution. When in the last years, Raj was unable
to attend the meetings of the trust, I asked his son,
Gopal, if he wished to continue on the board. Gopal
said there were only two things that mattered to him
now, CDS and EPW, and he would want the association
to continue to the very end.
K.N. Raj was many things to many people; but he was,
most of all, a teacher and a source of inspiration for
generations of students. Five years ago, when the indefatigable
A.A. Baby of Thrissur organised a conference in his
honour, Professor Utsa Patnaik of JNU, the eminent and
forceful economist, wrote that she could not attend
but that she would always feel a very deep sense of
gratitude to Raj. Patnaik said she had been a shy and
quiet student at the DSE in the 1960s and it was Raj
who sought her out, encouraged her to ask questions
and pursue research in economics - and that, in some
sense, it was Raj who pushed her into becoming an academic
economist.
February 12, 2010.
Source : The writer is Editor of the ‘Economic and Political
Weekly', Mumbai |
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