Nehru's planner who saw tomorrow

Professor K N Raj — an economist, planner, institution builder, one of the distinguished directors of Delhi School of Economics, vice-chancellor of Delhi University, founder of Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram — died on Wednesday at a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. He was 86.

Kakkadan Nandanath Raj was all of 26 when he was summoned by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to help write the first chapter of India’s first Five-Year Plan for 1951-56.

“The central objective of planning in India”, wrote Raj in the opening paragraph of the First Plan, “at the present stage is to initiate a process of development, which will raise living standards and open up to the people new opportunities for a richer and more varied life.”

A contemporary of K R Narayanan, former President of India, Raj earned a scholarship that took him to the London School of Economics (LSE), where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the monetary policy of the Reserve Bank of India. He was awarded the PhD in 1947, after which he went to Colombo to work in a newspaper owned by his classmate, Vijaya Wardhane. On returning, Raj worked initially at the RBI, from where he was summoned by Nehru after Panditji had received a letter from Harold Laski, the distinguished political scientist and director of LSE, advising Nehru to utilize the services of this “bright young economist”.

Raj presided over the Delhi School of Economics at a time when his colleagues included Amartya Sen, I G Patel, Manmohan Singh, Jagdish Bhagwati and a legion of distinguished economists and social scientists. After a brief stint as vice-chancellor of Delhi University, Raj moved to Thiruvananthapuram where he set up the Centre for Development Studies (CDS). In its prime, the Centre had economists like Joan Robinson and John Hicks as visiting fellows and I S Gulati, A Vaidyanathan and T N Krishnan as senior faculty. It brought to global attention the famous “Kerala model” of development, with emphasis on human development.

After his initial brush with planning in the 1950s, Raj left his imprint on policy in the 1970s, chairing a famous committee on taxation of agricultural income. Raj became a legend among economists, mainly for his ability to think ahead of his times. He shared Nehru’s enthusiasm for industrialisation, took a keen interest in the development of China, was among the first to draw attention to industrial slowdown in India in the 1970s and commented on the coming crisis of Europe’s centrally planned economies.

Raj had a wide range of friends cutting across professions and generations around the world and in India. He engaged Kerala’s Communist Party ideologue, E M S Namboodiripad, in a series of debates on Indian economic policies and trends. He was a staunch critic of the Emergency in 1975-77 and a defender of central bank autonomy. Raj took keen interest in appropriate and environment-friendly technologies long before this became a fad, commissioning Gandhian architect Lawie Baker to build the CDS campus using brick and mud. Baker’s architecture has become world famous since. In January 2000, childhood friend K R Narayanan conferred a Padma Vibhushan on K N Raj.

Raj was born on May 13, 1924 to Gopalan and Saraswathi at Eranjippalam, near Kozhikode. His father was a munsiff and later served as District Judge in the State of Madras. Ayyakkutty, his grandfather, was a judge, too, in the erstwhile State of Cochin. Raj graduated from the University of Madras in 1944. He is survived by two sons, the elder, Gopal Raj, is the highly regarded science editor of The Hindu.