Noted Economist Bibek Debroy passes away at 69
New Delhi: Bibek Debroy, key economic adviser to Prime Minister. whose prolific work included translations of the Puranas and the Vedas, passed away on Friday. He was 69.
Debroy, who had a history of diabetes, hypertension, and a blockage in the heart for which he had a pacemaker, was admitted to the AIIMS emergency late on October 31 and died around 7 am on Friday.
An empirical economist and a Padma Shri recipient, Debroy was the chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council since September 2017.
An alumnus of Presidency College, Kolkata, Dr Debroy studied at Delhi School of Economics and Trinity College, Cambridge. He worked in Presidency College, Kolkata; Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune; Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi; and was also director of a finance ministry/UNDP project on legal reforms. He was also a member of Niti Aayog up to June 5, 2019.
A columnist to several newspapers, he had four days before his death sent a piece to a newspaper with a note: “Unusual Column. Short of a requiem”, according to the daily. In the article, not published yet, he wrote about life after coming out of the cardiac care centre at AIIMS nearly a month ago. “There is a world outside that exists. What if I am not there? What indeed?" he wrote, in the article posted by the newspaper on its website on Friday.
In 2016, the government decided to merge the Railway Budget with the Union Budget from Budget year 2017-18 based on the recommendations of a committee headed by Dr Debroy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled Dr Debroy’s passing and called him a “towering scholar”. Modi said in a post on X: “Dr Bibek Debroy ji was a towering scholar, well-versed in diverse domains like economics, history, culture, politics, spirituality and more. Through his works, he left an indelible mark on India’s intellectual landscape. Beyond his contributions to public policy, he enjoyed working on our ancient texts, making them accessible to the youth.”
Dr Debroy’s economic interests and research work covered numerous areas such as economic theory, income inequality, and infrastructure financing.
In his long career as economist, within and outside the government, Dr Debroy also courted controversies, including the one when as director (research) of Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies in 2005, he came out with a research paper, rating Gujarat as the number one state in India in terms of providing economic freedom.
He was reportedly shifted thereafter. The research paper was sponsored by the Friedrich-Naumann Stiftung in Germany and published by RGF, which oversees the operations of the institute.
In September, Dr Debroy resigned as chancellor of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) after the Bombay High Court extended interim relief to Vice Chancellor Ajit Ranade, who was earlier removed from his post. Dr Debroy was named Chancellor of GIPE, a deemed-to-be university, in July.