Eminent economist, noted academic and policy advisor Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri, who bewitched and inspired generations of students at the Delhi School of Economics with his lively lectures on an ostensibly arid subject, passed away at his Pune residence on Tuesday aged 81.
The cause of his death was cardiac arrest, said family sources. Dr. Chaudhuri had moved to Pune seven years ago to live with his brother after the weather in New Delhi proved insalubrious to his health.
“He was suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and I convinced him to move to Pune after he underwent a bypass surgery,” said his bother Malay.
‘MDC’ as Professor Chaudhuri was popularly and affectionately called, studied with Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen in Shantiniketan and furthered his education at Kolkata’s Presidency College before completing his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he studied modern economics under the legendary Paul Samuelson, whom Dr. Chaudhuri personally regarded as “the greatest economist of the 20th century”.
A major influence on planning through his numerous prescient papers, Dr. Chaudhuri’s works had an enormous impact on former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.
A particularly noteworthy paper he authored pertained to the challenges of economic reform in the context of both State and market failures in 1990, just before the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union and India’s lurch towards globalization.
Known for his close ties with Dr. Singh, Dr. Chaudhuri was a policy advisor in the former Congress-led UPA governments and part of the unofficial think tank that helped usher in the policy reforms of 1991.
Awarded the Padma Bhushan in the field of Trade and Industry in 2005, Dr. Chaudhuri served as Director, Delhi School of Economics and was a visiting professor of economics at the Universities of Harvard and Minnesota.
