Ashok Mitra

Ashok Mitra (10 April 1928^[1] – 1 May 2018) was an Indian economist and Marxist politician. He was a chief economic adviser to the Government of India and later became finance minister of West Bengal and a member of the Rajya Sabha.

Early life and education

After completing his graduation from the

Mitra taught as a lecturer in economics at the University of Lucknow for two years before proceeding to the Netherlands to complete his PhD thesis. He taught at the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East in Bangkok, Thailand, before returning to Delhi in 1961.^[1] He joined the Economic Development Institute in Washington, D.C., as a faculty of economics during the early 1960s. He also worked for the World Bank in the 1960s. In the early-1990s he became the chairman of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.^[1]

Political

After returning to India he accepted the professorship in economics at the newly established

He authored the "Calcutta Diary" in Economic and Political Weekly and "Terms of Trade and Class Relations". He contributed articles regularly to the Calcutta-based national daily newspaper, The Telegraph. He also wrote short stories in Bengali. He was conferred the Sahitya Academi Award in 1996 for his Essays entitled Tal Betal.^[1] His publications include China-Issues in Development and From the Ramparts, Prattler's Tale: Recollections of a Contrary Marxist (which has also been published in Bengali as Apila Chapala).^[1]

He founded a journal entitled Arek Rakam.^[3]

Death and family

Mitra was married to Gouri, who died aged 79 in May 2008.^[4] He died on 1 May 2018 at the age of 90.^[5] Ashok Mitra is survived by his only sibling, Sreelata Ghosh (née Mitra), sister.

References

Further reading

• Chakravarty, Suhash (19 March 2007). "The Importance of Being Ashok Mitra". Outlook. Retrieved 20 August 2019.