Who was Abhijit Sen, Leading Economist of Indian agriculture passed away?

Abhijit Sen, a renowned agricultural economist and former member of the Planning Commission during the previous United Progressive Alliance government, passed away on Monday. He was 72 years old.

He “had a heart attack around 11 p.m. We rushed him to the hospital, but it was all over when we got there,” said Pronab Sen, his brother, also an economist, chairman of the National Statistical Commission and India's Chief Statistician.

In an academic career that spanned more than four decades, Sen taught economics at Sussex, Oxford, Cambridge and Essex before joining Jawaharlal Nehru University's Center for Economic Studies and Planning in 1985. There, along with economists such as Krishna Bharadwaj, Prabhat Pattnaik, C.P. Chandrashekhar, Amit Bhaduri and his wife Jayati Ghosh, he helped build the department's reputation as a leading center for development economics and the study of Indian economics.

In a career that spanned more than four decades, Abhijit Sen taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and held a number of senior government posts, including chairman of the Agricultural Prices and Costs Commission.

He was a member of the Planning Commission from 2004 to 2014, when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister.

In addition to policy making, Sen also had a distinguished academic career with a Ph.D It was incorporated into the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Center for Economics and Planning in 1985. This center, which also featured other renowned scholars such as Prabhat and Utsa Patnaik, Krishna Bharadwaj, Amit Bhaduri, Deepak Nayyar, C P Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh (his wife) earned a reputation for critical economic thinking with a strong left-liberal orientation underpinned by quantitative research.

In 2004, he was appointed to the Planning Commission, then the main policy-making body on national economic affairs, for a five-year term and re-elected in 2009. There, among other things, he continued his advocacy of the universal PDS and remunerative prices for farmers, although this was at odds with the official policies of the Manmohan Singh government. He also dealt with the issue of commodity futures trading in India. In 2014, the Narendra Modi government replaced the Planning Commission with Niti Aayog.

Who was Abhijit Sen

Born in Jamshedpur on November 18, 1950, Sen went to school at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in Delhi before studying Physics at St Stephen's College in the University of Delhi. Switching to economics, Sen obtained her Ph.D. from Cambridge for his thesis, 'Agrarian Constraint for Economic Development: The Case of India' under the supervision of Suzy Paine.

He taught economics at Sussex, Oxford, Cambridge and Essex until he returned to India in 1985 to join the Center for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University. At the Center, she joined other economists such as Prabhat Pattnaik, Krishna Bharadwaj, Amit Bhaduri, C.P. Chandrashekhar, as well as his wife Jayati Ghosh, for making the department the main center of economic development in the country.

In 1997, Sen was appointed chairman of the Agricultural Prices and Costs Commission, the ministry that was involved in deciding minimum support prices for agricultural products, according to The Wire.

After he finished his three-year term in 2000, he was asked to head a committee called the High-Level Committee of Experts on Long-Term Grain Policy. A universal public distribution system for rice and wheat was one of many recommendations made by the committee. For the rest of his life, Sen would be a supporter of the PDS.

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