Veteran Marxist economist and politician Ashok Mitra, 89, is dead

The West Bengal former finance minister was also an economics professor at IIM-C at the time of its establishment

Eminent Marxist economist and politician, and former finance minister of West Bengal, Ashok Mitra, died at age 89 on Tuesday. His wife, Gouri, had passed away in 2008.

A graduate from the University of Dacca and post-graduate in economics from Benaras Hindu University, Mitra was also an alumnus of the newly established Delhi School of Economics in the early 1950s.

He also taught Economics at the University of Lucknow before proceeding to the Netherlands, where he earned a doctorate from the Institute of Social Studies.

Mitra taught at the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East in Bangkok, Thailand before returning to Delhi in 1961. He was a faculty member at the Economic Development Institute in Washington, DC, during the early 1960s, and also worked for the World Bank before accepting the Professorship in Economics at the newly established Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C). He was the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, and then Chairman of the Agricultural Prices Commission of the Government of India.

Mitra, who was finance minister of West Bengal between 1977–87, quit following disagreements with the then Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu. In the mid-1990s he became a Member of Rajya Sabha and was Chairman, Parliament's Standing Committee on Industry and Commerce.