The State Cabinet has decided to appoint development economist V.K. Ramachandran the vice-chairman of the State Planning Board.
Prof. Ramachandran, professor and head, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru, is a widely respected academic who specialises in agrarian issues and has to his credit several works on agrarian questions and rural development issues and on such varied subjects as education, labour, class, caste, gender discrimination and social oppression.
He has been a visiting professor at several national and international universities and had earlier served as member of the West Bengal and Tripura State Planning Boards. He has been member of the editorial boards of several internationally acclaimed journals and was for some time Deputy Editor of Frontline belonging to The Hindu group of publications. He is currently the editor of Review of Agrarian Studies , a peer reviewed journal of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies, of which he is also the managing trustee.
Hailing from Poonkunnam in Thrissur, 63-year old Prof. Ramachandran is the son of the late N.B. Menon, who was an officer in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Aniyathi Menon.
Although he currently lives in Bengaluru, Prof. Ramachandran has been spending a lot of time in Kerala and has written extensively on Kerala, two of his pieces being ‘On Kerala’s Development Achievements’ and ‘The Progress of School Education in Kerala’.
