Pitambar Pant | |
|---|---|
| Born | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
| Died | February 26, 1973 |
| Occupation | Civil service officer |
| Known for | Administrative reforms |
| Awards | 1973 Padma Bhushan |
Pitambar Pant was an Indian independence activist, civil service officer and writer, best known for his contributions for the establishment of the Central Statistics Office and for changing Indian system of measurement to metric system. He served as the secretary to Jawaharlal Nehru, the then prime minister of India and headed the perspective planning division of the Planning Commission of India. He was also the author of a number of books on socialist economics. The Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award, in 1973.
Pitamber Pant completed a master's degree in physics during which time he was involved in the Quit India movement and was imprisoned by the British. [1] This gave him an opportunity to get acquainted with Jawaharlal Nehru, J. B. Kripalani and several other independence activists and he worked as a secretary to Nehru, while in jail. After the Indian independence, Nehru, who had been impressed by Pant's preoccupation with economic planning, asked him to meet Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, an applied statistician of repute, and the two became friends and long-time associates. [2] [3] Pant accompanied Mahalanobis in the latter's overseas trips. [4] Later, he joined Indian civil service and was entrusted with the task of studying the system of measurement. After a detailed study, he submitted a report, proposing the metric system which was reported to have influenced the government's decision to adopt metric system. Later, he was entrusted with a study on statistical system and the report Pant prepared, along with N. T. Mathew under the title, Report on the Present Statistical Organization in Provinces and States in 1949 served as the blueprint for the establishment of the Central Statistical Unit, which, over time, evolved into the present-day Central Statistics Office. [5] [6]
In 1956, the Planning Commission of India as a staff member, taking up the position to the secretary of the Chairman, (Nehru, as the prime minister, was the chairman) [7] and headed the manpower planning division of the commission. [4] In this position, he prepared several reports concerning Indian labor force, utilization of professional manpower, and forecasting of manpower requirement and also headed the Indian Statistical Institute. [8] In 1958, he moved to the newly created perspective planning division as its head and held the position till he retired from official service in 1970. [1] During this period, he served as a member of the Fourth Five Year Plan. [9] After retirement, he was selected as the chairman of the National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination (NCEPC) but his tenure was short-lived due to his death [10] on February 26, 1973, succumbing to prolonged illness. [4]
Pant was the author of a number of books, including Memorandum on the introduction of metric system in India, [11] Manpower and educational development in India, 1961-1968 [12] and Urbanization and the long-range strategy of economic development. [13] The Government of India awarded him with the Padma Bhushan, the fourth highest civilian honor, in 1973, shortly before his death. [14] The Ministry of Environment and Forests have instituted an annual award, Pitambar Pant National Environment Fellowship Award, in his honor. [15] [16] [17] Economic survey of India (FY 2020-21) has mentioned his advocacy for the idea of "minimum needs". [18]
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis OBE, FNA, FASc, FRS was an Indian scientist and statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the first Planning Commission of free India. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to the design of large-scale sample surveys. For his contributions, Mahalanobis has been considered the Father of statistics in India.
The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. Considered the premier civil service of India, the IAS is a part of the union civil services and is one of the three arms of the All India Services along with the Indian Police Service being a part of union civil services Indian Forest Service being a part of the union natural resources services. Members of these three services serve the Government of India as well as the individual states. IAS officers are also deployed to various government establishments such as constitutional bodies, staff & line agencies, auxiliary bodies, public sector undertakings, regulatory bodies, statutory bodies and autonomous bodies.
Sumit Sarkar is an Indian historian of modern India. He is the author of Swadeshi Movement.
Bipan Chandra was an Indian historian, specialising in economic and political history of modern India. An emeritus professor of modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, he specialized on the Indian independence movement and is considered a leading scholar on Mahatma Gandhi. He authored several books, including The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism.
Bengali Brahmos are those who adhere to Brahmoism, the philosophy of Brahmo Samaj which was founded by Raja Rammohan Roy. A recent publication describes the disproportionate influence of Brahmos on India's development post-19th Century as unparalleled in recent times.
Delhi School of Economics (DSE), popularly referred to as "D School", is an institution of higher learning within the University of Delhi. The Delhi School of Economics is situated in University of Delhi's North Campus in Maurice Nagar. Established in 1949, the campus of the Delhi School of Economics houses the University of Delhi's departments of Economics, Sociology, Geography and Commerce, as well as the Ratan Tata Library. Out of the four academic departments, the Departments of Economics, Sociology and Geography come under the Faculty of Social Sciences, while the Department of Commerce comes under the Faculty of Commerce and Business Studies.
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a public university which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in Presidency College, Kolkata. Established in 1931, this unique institution of India is one of the oldest institutions focused on statistics, and its early reputation led it to being adopted as a model for the first US institute of statistics set up at the Research Triangle, North Carolina by Gertrude Mary Cox.
Govind Ballabh Pant was an Indian freedom fighter and the first chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Alongside Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabh Bhai Patel, Pant was a key figure in the movement for India's Independence and later a pivotal figure in the Indian Government. He was one of the foremost political leaders of Uttar Pradesh and a key player in the unsuccessful movement to establish Hindi as the official language of Indian Union.
Sankar Kumar Pal is a computer scientist and president of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is a computer scientist with an international reputation on pattern recognition, image processing, fuzzy neural network, soft computing, and machine intelligence. He founded the Machine Intelligence Unit in 1993, and the Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility in 2004, both at the ISI. He is the founder president of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Kolkata Chapter.
John Matthai CIE (1886–1959) was an economist who served as India's first Railway Minister and subsequently as India's Finance Minister, taking office shortly after the presentation of India's first Budget, in 1948. He was born on January 10, 1886, as the son of Challiyal Thomas Matthai and Anna Thayyil to an Anglican Syrian Christian family. He graduated in economics from the University of Madras. He served as a Professor and Head in University of Madras from 1922 to 1925. He presented two Budgets as India's Finance Minister, but resigned following the 1950 Budget in protest against the increasing power of the Planning Commission and P. C. Mahalanobis. He was the first Chairman of the State Bank of India when it was set up in 1955. He was the founding President of the Governing Body of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in New Delhi, India's first independent economic policy institute established in 1956. He served as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Mumbai from 1955 till 1957 and then as the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Kerala from 1957 to 1959. His nephew, Verghese Kurien, is generally recognized as the architect of India's White Revolution. Dr. John Matthai Centre, Thrissur, located on the large plot of land donated by his family, is named in his honour. His wife, Achamma Matthai was an Indian social worker and a women's rights activist. The Government of India honoured him in 1954 with the award of Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award, for his contributions to the society,
Sir Chintaman Dwarakanath Deshmukh, was an Indian civil servant and the first Indian to be appointed the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India in 1943 by the British Raj authorities. He subsequently served as the Finance Minister in the Union Cabinet (1950–1956). It was during this time that he also became a founding member of the Governing Body of NCAER, the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi, India's first independent economic policy institute established in 1956 at the behest of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. After resignation from Union Cabinet he worked as Chairman of UGC (1956–1961). He served as Vice-Chancellor of University of Delhi (1962–67). He was also President of Indian Statistical Institute from 1945 to 1964, Honorary Chairman of National Book Trust (1957–60). He founded India International Center in 1959 and served as Lifetime President of it. He was also chairman of Indian Institute of Public Administration.
The Feldman–Mahalanobis model is a Marxist model of economic development, created independently by Soviet economist Grigory Feldman in 1928 and Indian statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in 1953. Mahalanobis became essentially the key economist of India's Second Five Year Plan, becoming subject to much of India's most dramatic economic debates.
Dr. Shekhar Pathak is a historian, editor, publisher, activist, and traveller from Uttarakhand, India. He is known for his extensive knowledge of the history of colonial and postcolonial social movements and contemporary environmental and social issues in Uttarakhand, and colonial exploration in the Himalayas and Tibet. He has also been engaged in activism for various social and environmental causes since the 1970s.
Sukhadeo Thorat an Indian economist, educationist, professor and writer. He is the former chairman of the University Grants Commission. He is professor emeritus in Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is an expert on B. R. Ambedkar.
Abhijit Sen was an Indian economist who focused on studying rural development. Sen was appointed to the Planning Commission of India between 2004 and 2014 and held a number of policy making positions in India. Amongst his works included recommendations toward establishment of minimum support price for farm produce and a universal public distribution system.
Pushpesh Pant is an Indian academic, food critic and historian. He retired as a Professor of International relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. He is one of India's leading experts on International Relations as well as Indian cuisine, and as a columnist has written for a number of major publications like Forbes, Open, Outlook, Times of India and The Tribune.
Prem Chandra Dhanda was an Indian physician and a medical academic. He was the principal of the Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi and the director of G. B. Pant Hospital, New Delhi. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1962, for his contributions to medicine.
Ramkrishna Mukherjee was a scientist at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, President of the Indian Sociological Society (1973–75) and recipient of the Indian Sociological Society's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
Bhola Nath Mullik was an Indian civil servant, spymaster and the second director of the Intelligence Bureau of India (IB). He served as the director of IB from July 15, 1950, to October 9, 1964. He was known to be a hardworking official, with close contacts with the then Union government. It was reported that Mullik had been a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru, the erstwhile Indian prime minister and assisted Nehru to keep a watch on the movements of the relatives of Subhash Chandra Bose in the aftermath of Bose's disappearance in 1945. It was on his advice, that Nehru ordered for the establishment of Special Frontier Force (SFF) for defending against the Chinese army in the Sino-Indian War of 1962. The Government of India awarded him Padma Bhushan, the third-highest Indian civilian award, in 1964.
The following is a list of notable people associated withVisva- Bharati University and/or Santiniketan, a neighbourhood in Bolpur city in West Bengal, India:
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