He was a pioneer who re-established on a firmer footing the propositions first advanced by the Indian nationalist writers, and in the process illuminated with extraordinary clarity the workings of imperialism in producing underdevelopment.

Published – November 29, 2024 01:50 am IST

Prabhat PatnaikREAD LATERPRINT

Amiya Kumar Bagchi. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu

Professor Amiya Kumar Bagchi, who passed away on Thursday (November 28, 2024) evening, was one of the most outstanding economists, scholars, and public intellectuals of our time. A rebel all his life, he left the college where he had been admitted originally for speaking out against some injustice, and joined Presidency College, Kolkata, which had a freer atmosphere. After his Master’s in economics from Presidency, he went to Cambridge University on a West Bengal government scholarship, where he not only finished his doctoral work but also joined the Faculty of Economics and Politics, with a Fellowship at Jesus College.

He had started out as a mathematical economist, in fact a Game Theorist, but changed course while writing his Ph.D. dissertation and, and on the advice of one of his mentors, turned to economic history, a turn for which we must be highly grateful. He was not an economic historian in the narrow sense; rather, he was a macroeconomist working on historical data.

Seeing patterns in data

While digging up new and hitherto unavailable data with a diligence that could match that of the most industrious of the historians, he saw patterns in data which only his macroeconomics could enable him to see. He was thus an altogether new kind of an economist, au fait both in economic theory and in applied economics, including economic history. The first outstanding product of his prodigious scholarship was his book Private Investment in India 1900-1939, which many reviewers, even critics unsympathetic to his argument, have compared to the monumental works of anti-colonial historiography, such as those by Dadabhai Naoroji, Romesh Chunder Dutt, and D.R.Gadgil. This work was followed by his research on “Deindustrialization in the Indian economy in the Colonial Period” which again provided definitive evidence to clinch a long-standing debate that had gone on since the days of Naoroji and Dutt.

He was a pioneer who re-established on a firmer footing the propositions first advanced by the Indian nationalist writers, and in the process illuminated with extraordinary clarity the workings of imperialism in producing underdevelopment.

Published – November 29, 2024 01:50 am IST

Prabhat PatnaikREAD LATERPRINT