‘Shaibal left his impact on every major policy in Bihar’

PATNA: I knew

Shaibal Gupta

because his guru Pradhan Hari Shanker Prasad was a friend. I was teaching in the economics department at the University of Pennsylvania and in Swarthmore College; also putting the final touches to my approved doctoral dissertation.

One of my supervisors was Lawrence R. Klein, who later got the Nobel Prize. Klein had started the prestigious International Economic Review. He caught me in the Dietrich Hall, where we had our offices and told me a chap called PHS Prasad has sent a paper on ‘Growth for Full Employments’. Handing over the paper he said, “Give me your comments. The maths is OK.”

I returned the paper after a week saying I wish I had written it. The paper was published in the journal. I came back home and met Prasad at a new institute in Patna (AN Sinha Institute) of which the legendary AK Dasgupta was the director. Prasad and I became friends.

He produced some good students. P.P. Ghosh was the best and stayed on as a teacher in Patna and like all good teachers, remained unsung. Then there was Shaibal Gupta, Alakh Sharma and some others, who became ‘Acentrepreneurs’. A distinguished civil servant in Gujarat, Rathi Kant Basu, once called me an academician. When I remonstrated saying I was an academic, he said ‘Sir you go as an additional secretary in the Planning Commission at 33 and later as a secretary at 44: a dream any official would envy’.

Shaibal set up a very prestigious think tank in Patna at his Asian Development Research Institute, bringing out studies and influencing policy. He would meet me in Ahmedabad and Delhi and get me over to Patna. He would push the idea that Alagh says Bihar must grow at 15% annual, otherwise, it will never catch up.

I have a lurking suspicion he planted that idea, with Nitish Kumar, who referred it in summing-up a three-day meeting in Patna. He left his impact on every major policy issue in Bihar. His health started failing him but he kept up a hectic pace. He would always visit me in his sojourns to the West, breaking the journey in Ahmedabad in trips to Mumbai. We would make light food for him and we would catch up on ideas. He had a large house in Patna and would give me feasts when I went there, apart from my favourite Litti.

The last time I met him we reminisced about his guru, the impractical PHS Prasad. I said as chairman BICP, I invited Pradhan to give a set of three lectures on price policy in a growing economy and how he laid it all out. The conscientious workers there, including NT Srinivasan, a Railways Accounts Service cadre officer who was a finance member understood this and polished theories of long-range marginal cost pricing. Later we made Srinivasan the finance officer in JNU.

Shaibal regaled me with many such stories on how in Bihar brilliant ideas go begging and how his hands are always full. He always looked at those who wouldn’t t take ideas on account of caste, age or sex as the real bottlenecks to progress. He had a wide range of interests. They included the release of seeds issued at Pusa in Bihar for improving the productivity of paddy yield; better use of North Bihar Maize cultivation; or finding good vice-chancellors for universities in Bihar. ShaibalGupta I am sure is improving systems, in his quiet unobtrusive manner, wherever he is.

(Yoginder K Alagh is a former Union minister and former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University)


Explore the yearly horoscope 2025 for Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces zodiac signs. Spread love this holiday season with these New Year wishes, messages and quotes.