Sundaram Sankaran, a former World Bank official and a well known journalist, has passed away at his residence in Kensington, Maryland in the United States. He was 87.
He is survived by his wife Seetha and four children. Sankaran died on July 19, his family members said.
Having served the World Bank for over 25 years in Washington D.C., Sankaran, played an important role in shaping the Bank’s information policy in developing countries. He retired in 1988 as Chief of the Bank’s Public Affairs Division.
Sankaran began his journalistic career with the Press Trust of India (PTI) in 1950 and then worked for The Statesman in Mumbai. In his eight-year stint with the newspaper he had covered important developments including the ‘Samyuktha Maharashtra agitation’ for the bifurcation of the then Bombay Presidency.
A student of Economics in India and then in 1975 a fellow of the ‘Economic Development Institute,’ a World Bank-Harvard University venture in Washington, Sankaran was presented the ‘Indira Gandhi Media Award’ by the Indian community there. After his retirement from the World Bank, he was the U.S. correspondent for several Indian dailies and had written for various newspapers including The Hindu .
Keenly interested in Indian classical music, Sankaran wrote for Sruti , a Chennai-based magazine on classical music. He donated his collection of classical music— 185 tapes and 20 long playing records— to the archive of ‘World Music Collection’ at the Loeb Music Library at Harvard University.
