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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Intellectually, he was unforgiving by TCA Anant

Intellectually, he was unforgiving by TCA Anant

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published Published on Jun 24, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 24, 2011


 I first met Professor Suresh Tendulkar when I was a student at the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). He had also joined around the same time as a teacher at DSE. I have two vivid memories of him as a teacher. First, he would use the blackboard in a particular manner. He would start from one end of the board and write till the end of it. The board was so perfectly organised that I now wonder if we had cameras in those days, could we capture the entire blackboard?

Second, if one became a little inattentive in the class, as we used to become as students in those days, then one could miss a lot. We would presume we could learn later, from the course material. But many a time, it would so happen that he would teach some work of his that had not yet been published, and couldn’t be found anywhere in the notes. What he taught in class was outstanding.
 
He was also a prolific researcher. All of us learnt from him something that we could have never learnt by just reading the course study material.

My second experience with Suresh was when I joined DSE as a junior teacher. Suresh and I together taught the course for industry. He was an extremely conscientious colleague. He would honour his commitments to the letter. And if you needed any help, he would offer it without any hesitation.

Another quality he possessed was his level of organisation. I remember once asking him something, to which he responded after checking his diary. He would maintain a diary in which he would append clippings from newspapers, other sources and anything he found interesting. He could remember something he read and noted years ago. His diaries would still be an enormous source of knowledge.

Despite being the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council and holding high positions in the government, he remained an extremely simple man. There was no sign of arrogance. I would call him a person who was firmly interested in the issues of the mind. He was a complete and honest intellectual. He would not pay much attention to the ordinary luxuries of life. In that manner, he was an extraordinarily simple and humble person.

He made a big contribution to a range of subjects, from conceptual issues in planning to problems of employment and industry, among others. His contribution in each of these areas is unique. All his research has been and will remain a good reference point for future economists and academicians.

In Suresh, the nation also had a commendable policy economist. He chaired the expert group appointed by the Plan Panel to estimate levels of poverty in India, was part of the first Disinvestment Commission (1996-99) and the Fifth Pay Commission (1994-97). He was also on the NSSO governing council and the first chairman of the National Statistical Commission. Suresh played a major role in the way the statistical commission has come about.

In all of these areas, his contribution has been of immense value. If I were to view Suresh’s role as a policy economist, he played a major role in shaping Indian economy in the post-liberalisation era. It was not that he was a complete market liberalisation economist; his work on poverty reduction and redistribution has been of equal importance.

Poverty estimation is another area with which Suresh has been associated for a very long time. Principally, the challenge with poverty estimation is the use of National Sample Survey data to estimate how many people are poor on the basis of normative criteria. This has been an extensive area of research, going back to our freedom struggle. Suresh was grappling with the existing formulations of poverty estimation based on a certain calorific form. But, over time, as the consumption and food basket changed, Suresh’s challenge was to capture this evolving consumption pattern. The contribution of Suresh and the Planning Commission committee was to devise a method that would capture data while it still remained comparable. This is where he made a pioneering contribution.

Principally, Suresh was very careful about the use of statistics. I remember in one seminar Suresh was being extremely harsh on a well-known economist who, while presenting a paper, conjured up different sets of data to prove a point. When Suresh came to know about such an inconsistent use of data, his criticism was scathing. Intellectually, he was unforgiving.

Personally, he was a very private person, having a close family. Suresh was not one into mixing with people. I knew his family but I didn’t know him personally that well. He was never into ostentation. Both to me personally and to a large community of economists, he will be greatly missed. He was always available for help, opinions and brainstorming. This is a big loss to the nation.

(As told to Sunny Verma)

The author is the chief statistician of India.


The Financial Express, 23 June, 2011, http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Column--Intellectually--he-was-unforgiving/807351/


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