Written for Oikonomica, a webzine run by the Economics undergraduates, Presidency University.

PROLOGUE

I joined Presidency College as a fresher sixty-four years ago in 1959 and the undergraduate Economics programme in 1961. Naively perhaps, it was a practice at the time to view the college as the best undergraduate institution in town (or even the country). The university that stands today in the same premises was not even a springtime dream that anybody dreamt. The college alone was thought of as the ultimate example of academic perfection, one where the best students in town congregated. 

Even if I had entertained similar ideas during my immature student days, my views have undergone transformation through a lifelong association with the teaching profession. Indeed, having now arrived at the autumn, or perhaps early winter, of my life, I find myself pretty much in disagreement with the best students qualifier. I have come to believe over time that nature abhors the best as much as it abhors vacuum. One can always speak of the better, but never quite the best. This is not to suggest that I have fallen out of love with the college I went to or the university that stands in its place now. It is merely a daily reminder that I should not leave this world with a fogged-up vision of myself. 

During my student days, one had to pursue a ten-year school programme, followed by two years in college. These two years were devoted to a preparatory or what used to be known as an intermediate programme, following which one either entered the two-year BA or BSc stream or a four-year programme in an engineering or medical school or perhaps a chartered accountancy linked firm. There was a science and an arts branch of the intermediate class. Admission to these called for a minimum score in the immediately preceding School Board Examination and, since many families looked up to the sciences as the ultimate relievers of their financial woes, intermediate of science was the preferred alternative for the majority. Of course, poor people’s wards alone did not fill up the science classes. However, the effects of partition were a reality many people lived with at the time, and regaining their social status was definitely a goal of many educated families displaced from East Bengal. Hence, being admitted to the Presidency Science Stream was cause for celebration. 

Simple demand and supply laws ensured that the price of entry to the science programme (i.e., the cut-off mark) was higher.¹ And, needless to say, Presidency College had a higher cut-off requirement than all other colleges. Consequently, anyone whose aggregate score in the school leaving examination assured entry into the Science Stream of Presidency College was considered to be meritorious, i.e., one among the chosen few. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I woke up one morning to find myself identified as a member of the so-defined upper echelons of the student body. 

THE INTERMEDIATE CLASS

During our two-year stint with intermediate of science we were repeatedly told that it was providence alone that had to be thanked for the chance offered to us to study in Presidency College and that the college gates were wide open for us to leave if we so pleased. We needed Presidency in other words, but Presidency did not quite need us. Later on, as a student of the undergraduate economics class, we learnt the same lesson in the language of economic theory. This was in connection with the notions of free entry and exit from markets. Presidency College, we were told, did not quite satisfy the free entry assumption, but there were no barriers at all standing in the way of free exit from it. And this was compared to Presidency Jail in Alipore, where, according to our professors, entry was relatively free, but exit was not. 

When I was done with the intermediate class, I had to make a choice. Jadavpur University had its famous engineering school and I found admission there in the Civil Engineering course. Although my intermediate score was nothing to feel ashamed of, I knew that I was not a devoted student of the sciences. This must have been evident to the interviewers at Jadavpur University. Consequently, they chose me for the Civil Engineering course, which was not particularly sought after. They did not exactly want me and I in my turn did not want them either, which was when some well-wisher or the other suggested that I try out Economics in Presidency College. 

The advice was absurd to say the least, given that I had no idea what Economics was all about. However, I found out that the admission test carried out by the Economics Department in the distant past involved writing an essay in English and that alone. So, I took my chances and wrote an essay on a subject that could not possibly have had any connection with Economics at all. Given my intermediate score and the essay performance, I was selected. 

ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

The Economics Honours course, which offered a BA degree at the time,² was a combination of pure Economics(consisting of three subjects, Microeconomic Theory, Macroeconomic Theory and Indian Economics) and Political Science (which involved a generous dose of Political Theory, Aristotle’s Politics, John Stuart Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government, International Relations and so on). In fact, if I remember correctly, the course was even called Economics and Political Science. But it was more fashionable to refer to it simply as Economics, the status of Political Science (which no one considers a science even today)³ having probably been that of a distant cousin living in the districts. Status notwithstanding though, we were asked to study Political Science too as best as we could. 

The students were divided into two groups, those who loved Economics and those who did not. The latter turned into Political Science lovers by default perhaps. But there was a third group as well that treated the undergraduate programme as a stepping stone into the much-coveted Indian Administrative Services. 

The Economics part of the course was somewhat mathematical and students like me who had migrated from a recognised Science stream felt more comfortable with it.⁴ Some of the students who came from an Arts background had studied mathematics too at the intermediate stage. Nonetheless, for a strange reason, the science students believed themselves to be better equipped to study Economics. What added strength to this totally false perception was that many of the well-known teachers of Economics openly subscribed to the view that they preferred to teach students who did not have any prior exposure to the subject. This amounted to a pronouncement that students from the sciences were the preferred ones, since they could not possibly have studied anything remotely resembling Economics in their intermediate course. 

The implicit or explicit impact on me of the accordance of a second-class status to Political Science was unfortunate to say the least. At that impressionable age, I ended up with a reasonable (but far from perfect) understanding of classics like John Hicks’ Value and Capital but ignored overtly or covertly Aristotle’s Politics, or, for that matter, everything that was taught under the Political Science umbrella. It is quite possible that I was persuaded to believe that Political Science was useless insofar as it did not rely on calculus, linear algebra or related mathematical methods.⁵ In fact, this attitudinal problem led some of us to ignore a part of Economics as well, the one that was dubiously titled Indian Economics. 

The result was disastrous. I emerged from the Economics and Political Science course more illiterate than not. 

TWO TEACHERS 

Not long ago, I was interviewed about two of my renowned teachers in Presidency College, Professor Bhabatosh Datta⁶ and Professor Dipak Banerji.⁷ They were wonderful teachers who left a permanent impression on me. I will not repeat here what I had already said or written about them. Instead, I will start off with Professor Nabendu Sen, whose major characteristic was the low profile he maintained. 

Professor Sen taught us Indian Economics. He was a habitually shy person, lost in the shadows cast by his illustrious colleagues. It turned out that I had a family connection with him, or else, given my totally warped perception of Economics as an academic discipline, I might never have ended up knowing him at all. His fault of course was that he was a goldmine of knowledge concerning the Indian Economy. And he could and did pass on this knowledge to his students in a totally non-mathematical language. So, in my view and perhaps those of other misguided youngsters like me, what he taught was verbose at best and useless at worst. 

I have no clear recollection of what he taught us, except for an interesting definition he came up with in one of his lectures. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘was the precise meaning of the term middle class in India?’ That this widely used expression needed a definition at all was revelation to me. I little knew that a precise definition of terminology was necessary for any analytical exercise (or that analytical exercises did not necessarily involve mathematical equations). 

Well, this is how he went about defining a middle-class person. Those were days when (the then) Calcutta was littered with a number of elegant movie theatres. Most of them do not exist anymore. Their entry fees varied from 10 annas (approximately 62 paise) through Re. 1 and 4 annas (Re. 1.25) to Re. 1 and 14 annas (Re. 1.87).⁸ The first of these, the 10 anna-tickets had to be purchased by lining up on shady side lanes adjoining the theatres immediately preceding the show. And, quite often, those queues were populated by people who would normally not be admitted to our living rooms, but who could well be employed as janitors or house-servants. They may also have been people belonging to other suspicious professions, such as fish vending or vegetable selling. (I am not sure if women ever lined up for those tickets. Perhaps they did, or else where would the vendor’s wife watch Uttam Kumar and his contemporaries?) Most often they would be a rowdy lot with whom we were strictly forbidden to associate. The Re. 1 and 14 annas was a price that my peers’ families could ill-afford. Normally, those seats were reserved in the balconies of the theatres. It implied a financial status that we were advised to achieve through hard labour, i.e., by poring over our books. And that left the Re. 1 and 4 annas category. It involved a sum of money that we could not quite afford whenever we pleased, but it was not totally out of our reaches. At least, once in a while. 

Professor Sen defined a middle-class person to be one who bought the Re. 1 and 4 annas ticket to watch a movie. It was a clear definition, one that has clung to my mind till this day. That middle class person does not quite exist now, but whenever such persons come up for discussion, I am reminded of Professor Sen. That definition conjures up for me not merely the financial status of middle-class people those days, but also the culture they represented in Bengali society. What is the equivalent of Professor Sen’s middle class in today’s India in general and Bengal in particular could well be a topic for research.⁹ He was himself the ultimate example of a middle-class man. He exists no more of course, having had to depart this world well before the average time allotted by nature to mortal beings and that too under unenviable circumstances.  

Professor Nabendu Sen did not live far away from my home and despite my questionable attitude towards what he taught us, he entertained me with a smile whenever I visited him. We turned into wonderful friends partly on account of his collection of fiction. I borrowed merrily from his library and am not sure if I returned to him all the books that I borrowed. This was not a problem, since he was only too eager to forget what he had lent. And I tend to believe that his forgetful lender attitude was not confined to books alone. 

He spoke to me about the cinema too and what he had liked. He had impeccable taste in this matter to say the least and the long hours he spent with me discussing the finer points of classic movies such as To Kill A Mockingbird inspire me even now. A comic moment returns back in this connection. During one of our chats, I had blurted out that it was Tennessee Williams (or some author of his genre) who had written To Kill A Mockingbird. Professor Sen almost jumped up in horror. He could not himself remember the right name of course, but told me clearly that I needed to brush up my acquaintance with English literature. He rebuked me almost for mistaking Tennessee Williams for Harper Lee! How could I even entertain the thought? He never scolded me for bunking his classes. But he would not forgive me for mistaking Tennessee Williams for Harper Lee. This was one rare occasion when I felt ashamed of my ignorance in Professor Sen’s presence. 

As I indicated, Nabendu Babu was a bit of an invisible man and that by choice. Yet, it’s not as though he did not have his own set of uncompromising demands. And one of these concerned a street he would always prefer to avoid. I found this out during a conversation I had with him when the first stretch of the metro rail was being constructed under Central Avenue. (I was then a faculty member at the Indian Statistical Institute, having moved far away from college days.) The Avenue had turned into a commuter’s hell for what appeared at the time to be the rest of eternity. One needed to be a supreme optimist to believe that civilization would ever return back there. It was the metro that I had mentioned to him, by casually remarking that the tears that were being shed by commuters would be compensated by comfort of travel in future. I was appealing in other words to what economists call cost-benefit analysis. Among other things, I told him that his journey to college would sooner or later turn into an enjoyable experience.

To my surprise he reacted with unmixed horror. How could I imagine, he asked, that he might agree to take a Central Avenue route to Presidency College? It did not have the aura of a College Street approach to his place of work! No person, he said, who was used to the uniqueness of a College Street ambience would ever agree to travel to Presidency College via Central Avenue. College Street in other words was his way to Plato’s Academy and he refused to compromise by traveling with barbarians using the metro. I suspect that the crowded College Street buses remained his preferred mode of transport till the day he fell sick. The metro under Central Avenue did not match his middle-class dreams. (In this connection, I doubt that Professor Sen would ever agree to buy a Re.1 and 14 annas ticket to watch his favourite movie. This unassuming man came to his place of work wearing a pair of un-ironed trousers and a bush-shirt, both off-white. For his footwear, he invariably chose black Kabuli chappals. But he simply slipped them on, without buckling the straps. The straps, if they existed, vanished under his bare feet. And I doubt that his chappals were ever polished.)      

After finishing my Master’s degree from Calcutta University, I had joined the newly started UGC sponsored research cell in Presidency College as a Junior Research Fellow. Among my assigned duties, one consisted of attending an advanced course on Linear Economic Models that Professor Dipak Banerji taught. Many others attended the class¹⁰ and among them was Professor Nabendu Sen. Professor Banerji asked us to work through the exercises in the text he used¹¹ for the lectures. That was a challenging task and I cannot say that I came out with flying colours. The devotion with which Professor Sen followed the lectures surprised me to no end. He did not belong to the group of teachers who used mathematics for teaching. Yet, he attended those classes and he did so, as I believe now, on account of the fact that he admired the sheer beauty of mathematical logic. I suppose he would have watched a Bharatnatyam performance (say, by Bala Saraswati) in the same spirit. Not because he was planning to dance, but because he loved the purity of art forms. 

I realised how serious he was when he visited my home one morning. I greeted him with an incredulous smile, for it was not common for professors to visit their students’ homes. And I was floored when I found out the reason for his visit. He had come to see me to discuss one of the problems Professor Banerji had assigned the previous day. It was a challenging problem and he had spent a sleepless night over it. Then, after failing to come up with any acceptable solution, he decided to walk over and see me, hoping that we would be able to figure things out jointly! I do not think I was able to meet his expectations on that magic morning. It was magic for me, for I am not sure till this day how many students have ever been blessed by their professors in this manner. 

I suppose one could go on with incidents such as this, but I will stop here, partly because I have another teacher’s memory to share. A last bit of Nabendu Sen memory lingers though. I had gone to Professor Dipak Banerji’s residence to share with him the news that Professor Sen had succumbed to his illness. I carried the news to Professor Banerji at the request of Professor Sen’s wife, with whom I was well acquainted. Professor Banerji and I sat face to face for several minutes. Professor Sen was a much-loved person and we did not know what to say to each other. At one point though, I muttered stupidly that I could not accept the fact that a man as sinless as Professor Sen would ever contact the dreaded disease. It was then that Professor Banerji spoke out. Would I be happy, he asked me, if anyone else were to fall prey to the disease? More than Professor Nabendu Sen, this piece of memory probably speaks about Professor Banerji’s way of reacting to illogical thoughts. 

The other person who keeps coming back to me from my student days is Professor Upendra Nath Ghosal. He was the Head of the Department at the time and taught us topics in Political Science. It was the American Constitution that I was learning from him. I paid little attention to what he taught, but he paid a lot of attention to my lack of attention. The department conducted internal examinations and I was not a great performer in non-mathematical courses. Professor Ghosal read out our scores in the class and every time my name came up, he would pull me up for my indifferent progress. Among other things, he asked me (and the likes of me) whether I had a career plan in my mind. Given his way asking, I ended up with the impression that a student without a career plan was doomed to perish. That could well have been true, but the fact was that I did not quite know what a career plan was. Besides, I had no idea what the American Constitution had to do with my so-called career plan either. 

Things turned worse when I discovered that one of my classmates, whom Professor Ghosal liked, had learnt by heart the chapters on the American constitution from the textbook. I asked this classmate what required him to learn them by heart. His reply was that the quality of language used in the book was going to fetch him a high score in the forthcoming examinations. I was confused. What was more important, I asked myself, my understanding of the American constitution or the language I used to express my understanding or a lack of it? 

I concluded that, as far as the approved path went, language mattered more than the substance. Unfortunately though, I was not capable of learning by rote. And since Professor Ghosal himself used words in the English language that I was not particularly familiar with at that stage of life (one such word, I recall, was abrogate), I failed to resolve the conflict between my questionable command over the English language and my equally questionable command over the American constitution. The result of course was that I ended up learning neither Professor Ghosal’s English nor his American constitution and my scores continued to remain poor. Worse, I could not figure out if the reason underlying my indifferent performance was my poor language skills or my poor understanding of the subject itself, or, both. 

In Professor Ghosal’s eyes, as I think of it now, I had abrogated my responsibilities as a student. He correctly concluded of course that I was not a good student of the American constitution. And he concluded simultaneously that I did not know how to write a grammatically correct sentence in English. The second of these conclusions was somewhat erroneous, but there was little I could do to change his perception. 

An incident that took place will clarify matters further. Bureaucracy then ensured that we carried endlessly many hard copies of documents certifying our claims to greatness or otherwise. And more often than not, the Head of the Department would be the certificate issuing authority. I cannot recall its exact nature anymore, but I needed one such certificate about me. It was a pretty innocuous document consisting perhaps of three sentences at most. I wrote them out myself, but someone was needed to type it for me. The only gentleman I knew who could do that bit of work was one Nires Babu,¹² a man who was a secretary of sorts employed to look after the office work in the Department of Economics. I requested him to type my certificate and visited him several times to start him off on the job. It was getting late when he finally agreed, but what he typed was very different, grammatically speaking, from what I had written about myself. I detected the lapse immediately. However, being no more than nineteen years old, I lacked the courage to point it out to Nires Babu himself. So, I accepted the certificate from him (along with carbon copies, since Xerox was unheard of at the time), and walked into Professor Ghosal’s office to get it signed. Professor Ghosal was about to leave, but he agreed graciously enough to stay back an extra few minutes to sign the document. 

He read what I had given him and asked me who had written it. I had written it of course, but it was Nires Babu who had typed it and what he had typed, as I knew, was not quite what I had requested him to type. Professor Ghosal refused to accept this finer distinction between the writer and the typist and threw back the document (along with carbon copies) at me asking me to get lost. He would not, as he said, affix his signature on a document full of grammatical mistakes. If he did, his own command over (his own brand of) English would have been questioned (by invisible people in hidden corridors of power). His impression about me being a poor student in his class partly explained his reaction of course. Unfortunately, though, he thought not only that I was a poor student, which I was, but also that I couldn’t write simple sentences in grammatically correct English, which I could. On that long-lost afternoon, I failed to blame it on Nires Babu either, since I could need his help in the future too. But I ended up in Professor Ghosal’s eyes as the ultimate example of a failure, one who had not planned a career, not understood the American constitution and last but not least, not been able to write a simple (leave alone a compound) sentence in the English language. Nires Babu’s desk was right outside Professor Ghosal’s office and when I came out, I saw him standing there. He had overheard Professor Ghosal’s rebuke and probably knew that it was he who was to be blamed. He watched Professor Ghosal walk out and whispered to me that he would be taking care of the matter. I do not think I felt too assured and cannot remember how I got myself certified. 

RESEARCH SCHOLAR DAYS

I move over now to a later period of my association with Presidency College. After I finished my MA examination, I was loitering around, as Professor Ghosal had predicted I would be, not knowing what to do next. Fortuitously, the Economics Department had received around the same time a grant from the UGC to establish a research cell (which later grew into The Centre for Economic Studies). Professor Tapas Majumdar¹³ and Professor Dipak Banerji were closely involved with the project and they too were looking around for youngsters to fill up the two junior research scholar positions in the cell. Vagabond though I was, they thought I could be selected as a scholar and the other one chosen was a young lady called Asha Jain (now Maheshwari). She had been my classmate during undergraduate days. 

The scholarship offered was a princely sum of Rs. 300 per month. I suppose a professor in a government college earned around Rs. 500 at the time (give or take Rs. 100 or so). I was asked to engage myself in research (whatever that meant) and conduct tutorial classes for undergraduate students. Professor Dipak Banerji was my supervisor and I started studying non-linear programming techniques under his guidance. I am not so sure, once again, how seriously I pursued my work and I admit that during those early days, Professor Banerji was not particularly happy with me. But not quite as unhappy as Professor Ghosal either, who, fortunately for me, had retired by then. 

I was delighted to start off with Rs. 300 per month, except that neither Asha nor I were regularly paid. We used to get our scholarship money once every quarter or so and that was a problem for me at home. Having had completed my MA, I was expected to contribute to the family kitty, which, with my unsure earnings, I was unable to. Family members accused me of postponing the inevitable. In other words, my pursuit of a PhD degree was viewed as a non-starter and they felt, rightly perhaps, that I ought to seek a clerical job somewhere. I didn’t quite know where to seek a clerical position either and kept running from pillar to post instead in search of my scholarship money. 

This involved visiting the powers that be in the Education Department in Writers Building or the clerical staff in charge of money disbursement in the Accountant General, West Bengal (better known as AG Bengal) office. I visited both buildings with varying degrees of failures and I will share pieces of those experiences with you here. Writers Building told me on one occasion that my position as a research scholar did not even exist, implying thereby probably that I would be required to return to the authorities whatever money I had already received. I came back trembling all over and saw Professor Tapas Majumdar at his home to deliver him the news. He asked me to stop worrying and left me waiting in the room. I had waited half an hour or so when he came back. To my great embarrassment, he offered me my scholarship money in cash (which he had doubtlessly withdrawn from his bank) and told me to pay him back when the money arrived from the government. 

This was one of the most awkward experiences of my life and I came back home unable to decide how to face him next day. I felt the depth of his kindness, but could not quite accept the favour. Finally, I went back to his residence to return him the money he had offered. It was he who was dumbstruck this time. He asked me repeatedly what my problem was, but the middle-class boy in me (to whom I had been introduced by Professor Nabendu Sen) simply could not go through with the ritual and I kept repeating back to him that I didn’t need the money, after having complained to the self-same man only a day ago about my financial distress. 

Respectfully, I gave him back the money, which he accepted with bewilderment. He ensured within a few days though that my research scholar position was valid, thereby putting Writers authorities out of my way. Although the ontological problem surrounding my research scholarship was resolved peacefully, the flow of money did not resume and this required me to visit the AG Bengal office. It is at this office that I came across the man actually in charge of disbursing money. It took me a while to locate him and when I did find him, he was not willing to entertain me for a while. I had to explain to him several times that I was one of the two research fellows in Presidency College who were yet to receive their scholarship money. He asked me in turn what the names of the two research fellows were. I told him the two names, viz. Asha Jain and Dipankar Dasgupta. Pat came his next question, ‘Who are you? Asha Jain or Dipankar Dasgupta?’ 

During the research scholar stage of my life, I came into close contact with other people too, particularly those belongingto the penumbra zone separating academic and office staff. Some of them worked for the Economics Department library.¹⁴ They did not look up to me as a member of the teaching staff and identified me as one of their own. A reasonably close friendship grew up between us and we often spent our spare time chatting over tea and jhalmuri or the Bengali singara, which a very young class four employee¹⁵ fetched for us from College Street.¹⁶ We used to assemble in a hidden recess of the library stacks and exchange stories (among other things) about renowned professors. A much revered scholar was Professor Sukhamoy Chakraborty,¹⁷ who had briefly taught us in the undergraduate class. Though we were too young at the time to appreciate the depth of Professor Chakraborty’s knowledge, the way he lectured in the class left little doubt in our minds about his erudition. To me at least, he always appeared to be a walking library. The library staff though had its own way of judging the eminent professor. What attracted them most was the sight of the man sitting on the floor of the stacks surrounded by books. As I said, I have great respect for Professor Sukhamoy Chakraborty as well, but not, I think, on account of the dust he gathered from the library on the seat of his pants. Had it been left to the library employees though, they would surely have reserved a part of the library floor for a Dakshineshwar Temple-style inscription in memory of Professor Chakraborty. They represented innocence at its best. 

EPILOGUE

Let me finish off with the sweetest of my memories, one that will never leave me. I do not think this happens anymore these days in the Department of Economics. I have already said that during my tenure as a research scholar, I had to teach undergraduate classes. I was in my early twenties at the time and these boys and girls were teenagers not much younger. A friendship developed between us. Sometimes I needed to scold them too, but that did not stand in the way of the companionship. The only student from those days with whom I am still in touch is Ranjan Ray, who teaches in Monash University, Australia. Ranjan and I continue to be good friends, which proves the point I am trying to make about the fondness that existed between the undergraduate students and me. The youngsters arranged for me a farewell party when I left the college and travelled to other destinations. It was highly unusual for undergraduate students to arrange such a party for a mere research scholar. Their farewell presents to me were two books, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s India Wins Freedom and Oscar Wilde’s Complete Works. These two books have moved with me to different parts of the world. And, more importantly, they still adorn my bookshelf. Perhaps Ranjan and his classmates have no recollection of the presents. They are welcome to visit my home, therefore, to check for themselves the veracity of my statement. 

Before, that is, it is too late. 

---

 

 

^[17] Professor Sukhamoy Chakraborty. (url at the end of the article)

Universities across the world started viewing Economics as a science subject much later. 

Footnotes.

1. This may well be the case even today. ↩︎
2. Universities across the world started viewing Economics as a science subject much later. ↩︎
3. It is interesting to note that it is Political Science and not Economics that has carried a Science tag much longer. Nomenclature can indeed be a mysterious business. The Political Science Department of Presidency University, despite the fact that it teaches a Science, offers a BA degree. This should be true elsewhere too. The awarding of a BA degree by Political Science Departments has a history of its own that curious students might wish to find out for themselves. ↩︎
4. These were pre-Mihir Rakshit days of the department. Unfortunately, he was away doing his PhD in England when we were undergraduates. After he rejoined the faculty at Presidency College, the subject flourished in all its glory, mathematical as well as non-mathematical. I will not speak about this master economist here. During my professional career, I learned a great deal from him and. we are still in touch. Talking about Professor Rakshit requires not one but several articles exclusively devoted to him. ↩︎
5. Political Science began using Game Theory much later. ↩︎
6. Bhabatosh Datta. ↩︎
7. Dipak Banerji-1. Dipak Banerji-2. ↩︎
8. India had adopted decimal currency in 1957, well before I entered college in 1959. However, it was common practice to refer to prices in the common practice to refer to prices in the non-decimal language and even use some of the old currency to carry out transactions for a number of years after the rupee changed from 16 annas to 100 paise. ↩︎
9. Hand in hand with the middle-class, there existed low middle-class people as well. Professor Sen did not define them for us. It is possible that they were a part, but not quite the whole, of the 10 anna-ticket buyers. They were not as well-defined as Sen’s middle-class. This is just to point out the uncompromisingly analytical nature of his mind. ↩︎
10. This included Professor Asim Dasgupta, West Bengal’s Finance Minister during the Left Front days. He was doing his MA in Economics at the time. ↩︎
11. The Theory of Linear Economic Models by David Gale. ↩︎
12. Nires, not Niresh, was the way he spelt his name in English. ↩︎
13. Tapas Majumdar. ↩︎
14. As far as I know, the Economics Library stands shifted now from the premises of the Economics Department itself. ↩︎
15. His name was Kishan (or, Kishen). To the best of my knowledge, that young boy grew into a young and then an old man at Presidency College. I am indebted to Sushmita Rakshit for helping me remember his name. ↩︎
16. The Economics Department treated me to College Street singers (probably supplied by Putiram Sweets) quite recently when I went there to attend the Dipak Banerji Memorial Lecture. The. singers brought these people back to my mind, especially so when I saw that their quality remains as superb as they were in the distant past. ↩︎
17. Sukhomay Chakraborty. ↩︎