NEW DELHI: 60-year-old economist, Bibek Debroy, who has been appointed as a permanent member of the new NITI Aayog, (alternate version of the disbanded Planning Commission) is author of many famous books including “Meghalaya, on the Paths to Prosperity”.
“This book is about Meghalaya’s governance and human development and about the role of the government, institutions and private enterprise in embarking on those paths to prosperity. It’s about the constraints, but it is also about means to overcome those. There are plenty of success stories in Meghalaya, not known as well as the obstacles. There are successes of individual enterprise in agriculture, horticulture, floriculture and animal husbandry and there are also successes in reinventing government schemes and improving delivery. The book is also an attempt to communicate that message of change. Meghalaya is one of those Seven Sisters in the North-East. If this book succeeds in making more people aware of the whiffs of change in Meghalaya, it will have served its purpose,” Aakhya Media Services, publishers of the book said.
Debroy has authored and edited books on a wide array of subjects such as Foreign Trade Policy Changes and Devaluation: Current perspective; India: Redeeming the Economic Pledge; The Indian Perspective on GATT; In the Dock: Absurdities of Indian Law among others. Notably, his interests do not confine to economics and law as is evident from the fact that he has penned many books on ancient Hindu epics. The most recent ones are the 10-volume translation of the Mahabharata.
As the head of Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Debroy had ranked Gujarat the top state in terms of economic freedom in a study released in 2004-05. Educated at Presidency College (Calcutta), Delhi School of Economics and Trinity College (Cambridge) he began his career as a teacher at his alma mater, the Presidency College, and later at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (Pune), Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (Delhi) and National Council of Applied Economic Research (Delhi).
Debroy had served as a consultant to the Department of Economic Affairs under the finance ministry. After his study on Economic Freedom Index, he took up the post of secretary-general of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He also worked as director for a project called LARGE (Legal Adjustments and Reforms for Globalising the Economy), set up by the finance ministry and United Nations Development Programme for examining legal reforms in the country.
At present, he is with the Centre for Policy Research and is heading a committee to restructure the Railway Board.
