Abhijit Sen will be remembered for his firm advocacy of universal public distribution

By Bharat Dogra
Economist Abhijit Sen passed away on the night of 29 August, 2022. He was 72.
For a long time he has been regarded as one of India’s leading agricultural economists who made a very important contribution to government policy, particularly in the context of public distribution system.
India’s structure of food security has been created to a considerable extent on a system of procurement food crops at a higher price from farmers and supplying at a lower, subsidized price to consumers. It is ideas and scholarship such as those of Prof. Abhijit Sen which contributed much to this. He emerged as a firm advocate of universal public distribution.
Those who were doubtful about this said that it will be difficult to go on for long with these subsidies. Sen countered this criticism by arguing that it is certainly possible at a fiscal level to accommodate a genuinely fair procurement price for farmers with an affordable price for consumers.
This brought him closer to the food rights movement in India and just as he was offering high level advice to the government as well as several United Nations agencies, he was able to find the time for helping food rights activists as well and in being generous to help younger colleagues in taking forward similar ideas and research.
Abhijit Sen obtained his doctorate from Cambridge University. After this he taught at Sussex, Oxford, Cambridge and Essex , finally joining the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi in 1985. He headed several important committees. He was Chairman of Agricultural Costs and Prices Commission, India. An important justice-based idea he advocated, and which has found a lot of support, is that while calculating the costs of farmers, the contribution made by family work should also be included. He also helped some state planning boards, in particular the boards of W.Bengal and Tripura.
Perhaps his even more important policy role was in the Planning Commission which he joined in 2004 and where he continued to contribute till this most important national planning organization was abolished very quickly in 2014 by the newly installed NDA government as one of its priorities.
However even the new government continued to value his advice as he now headed a task force on long term food grain policy.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2010.
He is survived by his wife Jayati Ghosh, an eminent economist, and daughter Jahnavi Sen, a journalist who is Deputy Editor of The Wire.
Abhijit Sen has left us when there is a yearning for implementing his ideas among a large and increasing number of people. There is increasing appreciation now of the need for ensuring a fair price to farmers, particularly to small and medium farmers and some of the biggest struggles of farmers have centered around this issue. Although there is growing concern for other important issues as well such as eco-friendly farming and sustainability aspects of farming, the issue of fair price for farmers remains a common one in all systems including organic and natural farming systems.

Similarly while there has been concern lately regarding the dominance of rice and wheat in public distribution system and the need for bringing in millets and pulses in particular has been emphasized, there is wide agreement that the basic structure of public distribution system reaching out even to very remote parts of the country should be protected and improved. What is more, there is increasing interest of several other countries of the global south in such systems and their improved versions.

The National Food Security Act of India in particular has attracted a lot of attention when food security arrangements in various countries of the global south have been discussed. In this context it is well to remember here that the scholarly work of Prof. Abhijit Sen had contributed to this as well as other important and well-regarded initiatives of India to reduce hunger.
In such efforts the sage advice of Prof. Abhijit Sen will be certainly missed in future but then there is the invaluable treasure of his scholarly work which will continue to remain a source of help and guidance.
---
The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Search This Blog