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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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