A Memorial Lecture to commemorate the anniversary of Prof KN Raj was held at the Centre on Monday, 11 February 2019.
The lecture was attended by friends, colleagues, faculty, staff and students along with other members of the CDS community. Prof Sunil Mani welcomed all by saying that February 10 is the day when we remember our founding father Dr KN Raj. It also a time for those who have hardly had any direct contact with him to be reminded and enlightened about his various contributions in terms of teaching, research and institution builder. One way to remember him is to understand what he stood for and for that CDS has been inviting people who have worked and been associated with him.
Prof Mani introduced Prof Sudipto Mundle as a very important scholar and was until recently an Emeritus Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy who had worked for more than 15 years at the Asian Development Bank, Manila, from where he retired as a Director in the Strategy and Policy Department in 2008. He served in several academic institutions including the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and then severed for five years at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, and after that at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi, where he was the Reserve Bank Chair Professor. Formerly he was a member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission, the Monetary Policy Advisory Committee of the RBI and the National Statistical Commission where he also acted as Chairman. He has had visiting assignments at Yale University, USA; Cambridge University, UK; the Institute of Social Studies at The Hague and the Japan Foundation, Tokyo. He was also an economic adviser in India’s Ministry of Finance from 1986 to 1989. He has also written extensively on a wide range of issues.
Prof Mundle stared his reflections on KN Raj by thanking the CDS for having invited him; he said it was exactly 40 years ago that he had spent time at the centre as a member of the faculty. He said that the CDS is actually Dr Raj’s memorial, a living and vibrant centre of scholarship which he has left for all as his legacy. He said that he was honoured to be able to pay his homage to Raj at the CDS on this day. Prof Mundle spoke about Dr Raj as an institution builder, a teacher and a researcher and more particularly as a family man who also had a very strong attachment and commitment to the family.
At the close of the lecture, Prof Manmohan Agarwal and Dr AV Jose also shared some of their experiences. Dr AV Jose spoke of his association with Dr Raj and how Dr Raj was able to influence, shape and mould him into an economist of repute.
Please click for a brief of the lecture as reported in The Hindu of 12 February, 2019