Economist Abhijit Sen passes away

 

 

 

ECONOMIST Abhijit Sen, a former Planning Commission member and one of the country’s foremost experts on rural economy, died on Monday night. He was 72. “He suffered a heart attack around 11 pm. We rushed him to the hospital, but it was all over by the time we got there,” said Dr Pronab Sen, his brother. In a career spanning more than four decades, Professor Abhijit Sen taught economics at Oxford, Cambridge and New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, and held several important Government positions, including the chair of the Commission of Agricultural Cost and Prices. He was a member of the Planning Commission from 2004 to 2014, when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister. In 2010, he was awarded the Padma Bhusan for public service. When the NDA came to power in 2014, it appointed Sen to head a high level task force to frame a “long term grain policy. Sen was a vocal advocate of a universal public distribution system for rice and wheat.