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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Communist and a bhadralok -Devadeep Purohit

Communist and a bhadralok -Devadeep Purohit

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published Published on May 2, 2018   modified Modified on May 2, 2018
-The Telegraph

Economist who served as finance minister dies at 90

Calcutta:
Former Bengal finance minister Ashok Mitra, who also served as the chief economic adviser to the Indian government, passed away in a city nursing home on Tuesday morning.

The Marxist economist was 90 and had been suffering from age-related complications.

His wife Gouri had died 10 years ago.

An economist by training - with a PhD under Nobel laureate economist Jan Tinbergen - Mitra held key offices in the economic bureaucracy in the country and abroad. But his rare ability to seamlessly slip into different roles - academic, administrator, politician, writer, editor and an activist - touched people beyond the world of economic policy-making.

Mitra was for decades one of the most popular columnists for The Telegraph and also Anandabazar Patrika, his writings, in his characteristic storytelling style, commenting on complex issues like Centre-state relations or occasionally paying tribute to eminent personalities with his insightful obituaries.

His offerings also included thoughts on the subcontinent's biggest passion - cricket. Be it Sourav Ganguly's omission from India's one-day international squad, or the shift of the India-England World Cup match from the Eden Gardens in Calcutta to Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore in 2011, the man who had once famously said "I am not a bhadralok (gentleman), I am a Communist" would eloquently write on the gentleman's game.

The Dhaka University alumnus also had the ability to laugh at himself. One of his students, who had attended his series of lectures on Centre-State Fiscal Relations in Jawaharlal Nehru University sometime in late 1987 or early 1988, recounted how Mitra, in his pristine white dhuti-panjabi, introduced himself.

"Once upon a time, I happened to be a finance minister of a state in India," he had said, which apparently left the entire postgraduate class in splits.

But when he left the Writers' Buildings in 1986 - after two stints as Bengal's finance minister - the then Jyoti Basu government had a difficult time. Mitra's decision to quit the government, and the party, because of differences with Alimuddin Street had come as an embarrassment.

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The Telegraph, 2 May, 2018, https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/communist-and-a-bhadralok-227499?ref=hm-ft-stry-5
 

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