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Mahesh

01/09/22 22:02 PM IST

Economist, former Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen passes away

In News 
  • Abhijit Sen, one of India’s brightest economists who taught as Jawaharlal Nehru University and served in various policy making institutions including the Planning Commission passed away after a heart attack recently.
Abhijit Sen 
  • He was a renowned agriculture economist and former member of the Planning Commission
  • He was also chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices (CACP) and authored the report of the High-Level Committee on Long Term Grain Policy (2000).
  • Sen studied Physics at St Stephens College Delhi before doing a PhD in Economics from University of Cambridge.
  • His thesis was called “The agrarian constraint to economic development: the case of India”.
  • Sen is also known for his seminal work in poverty and inequality in post-reform India, which he authored with his student (who now teaches economics at JNU) Himanshu.
Reforms suggested in his report
  • Greater diversification and decentralisation of public procurement to include a much larger number of crops and regions
  • Simplifying legal conditions on private trade.
  • Recommended that the CACP be made an empowered statutory body and its fixation of minimum support prices—which the government was bound to accept—be based on the ‘C2’ cost of production.
  • This paved the way for the ‘Swaminathan Formula’ in agriculture (2006)
  • An advocate of decentralized governance: Abhijit was a great believer in the principle of subsidiarity, that solutions to problems are best found closest to where they arise.
  • Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), which Abhijit conceptualised as a Member of, the Planning Commission in 2007. It sought to provide flexibility and autonomy to the States in planning and executing programmes, based on location-specific plans emanating from the districts.
Source- PIB 

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