Sanjeev Sanyal | |
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Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) | |
Assumed office 22 February 2022 | |
Principal Economic Advisor,Department of Economic Affairs,Ministry of Finance | |
In office 21 February 2017 - 20 February 2022 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Kolkata,West Bengal,India | 27 August 1970
Relatives |
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Alma mater | Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi St John's College, Oxford |
Occupation |
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Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian economist and popular historian. A member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, he has helped prepare six editions of the Economic Survey of India starting in 2017. Sanyal has also written several books on Indian history.
Sanjeev Sanyal was born in Kolkata and studied at St. Xavier's School and St. James' School. He received a Bachelor's degree in economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi. He then went to St John's College, University of Oxford, where he received a BA in philosophy, politics and economics in 1992, he was a Rhodes scholar, [3] [4] and received an MSc in Economics in 1994. [5] [3] [4]
Sanyal began working in financial economics in the 1990s. [4] In 2004, Sanyal and environmental economist Pavan Sukhdev created the Green Indian States Trust to promote sustainable development. [3] [6] He worked as chief economist for South and Southeast Asia at Deutsche Bank until 2008, leaving to research and write Land of the Seven Rivers, and returned in 2011. [3] By 2015, when he resigned, he was a managing director [lower-alpha 1] and global strategist. [8] [9]
In 2017, he was appointed as the Principal Economic Adviser to the Indian Ministry of Finance and in that job helped prepare six editions of the Economic Survey of India. [10] [9] In February 2022, he was appointed member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister in the rank of the Secretary to Government of India. [11] [4] He has also served on the Future City Sub-Committee of the Singapore government tasked with building a long-term vision for the city-state. [12] [13]
In March 2023, Sanyal led the first edition of the Delhi University Literature Festival as its patron, alongside Swapan Dasgupta as the festival director. [14]
Sanyal has been a vocal critic of Nehruvian socialism, which he deems to have stemmed from an "inward-looking cultural attitude". [15] Nehru and P. C. Mahalanobis are criticized for treating the economy as a "mechanical toy", leaving little scope for the flourish of private enterprises, and ultimately throttling creativity. [15] Sanyal praises the 1991 liberalisation reforms as the harbinger of Indian Renaissance, and argues for the application of Complex Adaptive Systems framework to economic issues. [3]
Among his most-espoused views is that the historiography of India has been distorted with "Colonial, Nehruvian, and Marxist" biases — thus, requiring a "rewriting" of history by "properly revisiting" primary sources. [15] In The Ocean of Churn, Sanyal argues that the primary sources used in painting a humane image of Ashoka can also be interpreted to reconstruct him as a genocidal tyrant. [15] According to Sanyal, Ashoka did not convert to Buddhism out of laments at the Kalinga War but due to political pressure exerted by the Jains. [16] A host of other sources are invoked to compare Ashoka with "modern day fundamentalists", whose Dhaṃma Mahāmātās were "religious police"; the famed edicts about religious tolerance are read as propaganda. [15] [16]
Sanyal blames the Nehruvian project for having established Ashoka as a "great king", and stresses on the urgent need of a post-socialist reading of history. [15] In Sanyal's version of this reading, the central character is Chanakya, a "professor of Political Economy at Taxila university" who had helped Chandragupta Maurya establish a pan-Indian empire and who then wrote Arthashastra about a centralised Mauryan economy. [15] Only when the Arthshastra is retrofitted to India's current political economy —by fixing the judicial system, investing in internal security, and simplifying taxation rules— among other things, Sanyal believes that we can return to the "golden age" of India that had birthed "yoga, algebra, the concept of zero, chess, plastic surgery, metallurgy, Hinduism, [and] Buddhism." [15]
Manu Pillai, a popular historian, commended The Ocean of Churn for being a "delightful introduction to the world of the Indian Ocean" despite the possibility of professional scholars challenging his narrative and conclusions. [17] He welcomed Sanyal's command over a layered and complex past, his "accessible" yet "captivating narrative", and especially the reevaluation of Ashoka. [17] Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist specializing in science and technology studies, praised the same work for being a feisty, combative, and comprehensive history of the Indian Ocean aimed at a general audience; like Pillai, he commended the "devastating" reconstruction of Ashoka and recovering figures from the margins of history. [16] However, Visvanathan cautioned that "a professional historian might crib" at Sanyal's efforts. [16]
Indeed, academic historians have rejected Sanyal's revionism. Meera Visvanathan, a historian of ancient India, finds him ignorant of methodologies in historical research. [15] For all his clarion calls to go back to primary sources, Sanyal's citations remained restricted to secondary sources and mostly, mainstream histories that he sought to critique. [15] In deconstructing the narrative of Ashoka, Sanyal failed to apply source-criticism [lower-alpha 2] and imposed a host of anachronistic categories on the past; likewise, Sanyal remained oblivious of recent scholarship on Mauryan India [lower-alpha 3] and misrecognised a shastra of political economy, as it developed in Ancient India, as a manual of Mauryan statecraft. [15] Similarly, Sanyal's analysis of the Mahabharata was held to be an exercise in speculation to fit preconceived notions of history. [15] Overall, Visvanathan found his works to be "riddled with holes" which commanded popularity among masses only because of Sanyal's "rhetorical flourish" and a simplicity that synced to majoritarian prejudices — Sanyal's work having not been critiqued or contested by professional historians, who have never taken him seriously, is why, Visvanathan suggests, he has grown in stature and confidence. [15]
Rohan D'Souza, a historian of South Asia at Kyoto University, approved of Visvanathan's critique as a "reality-check" to Sanyal's amateur efforts at rewriting history. [18] R. Mahalakshmi, a historian of ancient India at Jawaharlal Nehru University, held Sanya's reinterpretation of Ashoka to be entirely lacking in "contextual understanding" of the King and a politically motivated endeavor on the overall. [19]
Sanyal was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in 2007 for his work on urban issues. [4] In 2010, he was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. [3] He has been an Adjunct Fellow of the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore and Senior Fellow of IDFC Institute (Mumbai). [20] [21] Sanyal has been a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London, visiting scholar at Oxford University, adjunct fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies (Singapore), and a senior fellow of the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund). [4]
In 2022, Sanyal's Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won its Freedom won the best Non-fiction Book Award 2022 in English at the Kalinga Literary Festival. [22] In 2023, he was awarded the KPS Menon Memorial Award for 2023 for his contributions to economic policy-making and public service. [23]
Sanyal is an occasional columnist for the Hindustan Times , [32] Project Syndicate, The Economic Times , [33] Live Mint , [34] Business Standard , and several other publications. [35] [36]
Ashoka, also known as Asoka or Aśoka, and popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was Emperor of Magadha from 16 May 268 BCE until his death in 232 BCE, and the third ruler from the Mauryan dynasty. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, stretching from present-day Afghanistan in the west to present-day Bangladesh in the east, with its capital at Pataliputra. A patron of Buddhism, he is credited with playing an important role in the spread of Buddhism across ancient Asia.
The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in South Asia based in Magadha. It was the fourth ruling dynasty of Magadha. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya in 322 BCE, it existed in loose-knit fashion until 185 BCE. The empire was centralized by the conquest of the Indo-Gangetic Plain; its capital city was located at Pataliputra. Outside this imperial centre, the empire's geographical extent was dependent on the loyalty of military commanders who controlled the armed cities scattered within it. During Ashoka's rule, the empire briefly controlled the major urban hubs and arteries of the Indian subcontinent excepting the deep south. It declined for about 50 years after Ashoka's rule, and dissolved in 185 BCE with the assassination of Brihadratha by Pushyamitra Shunga and foundation of the Shunga dynasty in Magadha.
The Grand Trunk Road is one of Asia's oldest and longest major roads. For at least 2,500 years it has linked Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. It runs roughly 3,655 km (2,271 mi) from Teknaf, Bangladesh on the border with Myanmar west to Kabul, Afghanistan, passing through Chittagong and Dhaka in Bangladesh, Kolkata, Kanpur, Agra, Aligarh, Delhi, Amritsar in India, and Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar in Pakistan.
Kalinga is a historical region of India. It is generally defined as the eastern coastal region between the Ganges and the Godavari rivers, although its boundaries have fluctuated with the territory of its rulers. The core territory of Kalinga now encompasses all of Odisha and some part of northern Andhra Pradesh. At its widest extent, the Kalinga region also included parts of present-day Chhattisgarh, extending up to Amarkantak in the west. In the ancient period it extended until the bank of the Ganges river.
Dasharatha Maurya was the 4th Mauryan emperor from 232 to 224 BCE. He was a grandson of Ashoka the Great and is commonly held to have succeeded him as the emperor of Magadha. Dasharatha presided over a declining imperium and several territories of the empire broke away from central rule during his reign. He had continued the religious and social policies of Ashoka. Dasharatha was the last Mauryan emperor to have issued imperial inscriptions—thus the last Mauryan emperor to be known from epigraphical sources.
Irfan Habib is an Indian historian of ancient and medieval India, following the methodology of Marxist historiography in his contributions to economic history. He is known for his strong stance against Hindutva and Islamic fundamentalism. He has authored a number of books, notably the Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707, an Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, and an Atlas of Ancient Indian History. As the general editor, he is also the driving force behind the A People's History of India series, volumes of which continue to be released.
Kaurvaki was the "Second Queen Consort" of the third Mauryan Emperor, Ashoka The Great. She was Ashoka's fourth wife and 2nd queen consort. She was the mother of Ashoka's fourth son, Prince Tivala.
The Kalinga War was fought in ancient India between the Maurya Empire under Ashoka the Great and Kalinga, an independent feudal kingdom located on the east coast, in the present-day state of Odisha and northern parts of Andhra Pradesh. It is presumed that the battle was fought on Dhauli hills in Dhauli which is situated on the banks of Daya River. The Kalinga War was one of the largest and deadliest battles in Indian history.
The Economic Survey of India is an annual document of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. The Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance presents the Survey in the Parliament every year, just before the Union Budget. It is prepared under the guidance of the Chief Economic Adviser of India. This document is presented to both Houses of Parliament during the Budget Session.
The term "Hindu rate of growth" was coined by the Indian economist Raj Krishna in 1978. It refers to the annual growth rate of India's economy before the economic reforms of 1991, which averaged 4% from the 1950s to the 1980s. Advocates of liberalisation often use this term. However, modern neoliberal economists criticise the term, as they believe that the low growth rate was caused by the failed five-year plan model and economic mismanagement. Dirigiste policies often include indicative planning, state-directed investment, and the use of market instruments to incentivize market entities to fulfill state economic objectives.Eighth Five Year Plan was for managing the transition from a centrally planned economy to market led economy through indicative planning.
Dakshinapatha is a historical region which is the ancient equivalent of the present-day Deccan. It can also mean:
The History of Bihar is one of the most varied in India.Chirand, on the northern bank of the Ganga River, in Saran district, has an archaeological record dating from the Neolithic age. Regions of Bihar—such as Magadha, Mithila and Anga—are mentioned in religious texts and epics of ancient India. Mithila is believed to be the centre of Indian power in the Later Vedic period. Mithila first gained prominence after the establishment of the ancient Videha Kingdom. The kings of the Videha were called Janakas. A daughter of one of the Janaks of Mithila, Sita, is mentioned as consort of Lord Rama in the Hindu epic Ramayana. The kingdom later became incorporated into the Vajjika League which had its capital in the city of Vaishali, which is also in Mithila.
Rajapura was a term used in the Mahabharata to describe either a major city of the Kalingas or the royal palace of the Kalinga in the city Rajahmandry, believed to be the capital of the Kalingas. Rajapura has also been listed as one of the capitals Kalinga king Chitrāngada, specifically the site where the emperor Ashoka attended a bride selection ceremony.
Sadhabas were ancient mariners from the Kalinga region, which roughly corresponds to modern Odisha, India. They used ships called Boitas to travel to distant lands such as South-East Asia to carry out trade.
The Ashokan edicts in Delhi are a series of edicts on the teachings of Buddha created by Ashoka, the Mauryan Emperor who ruled in the Indian subcontinent during the 3rd century BC. The Edicts of Ashoka were either carved on in-situ rocks or engraved on pillars erected throughout the empire; examples of both are found in Delhi.
The Seleucid–Mauryan War was fought between 305 and 303 BCE. It started when Seleucus I Nicator of the Seleucid Empire sought to retake the Indian satrapies of the Macedonian Empire, which had been occupied by Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, of the Maurya Empire.
The Lion Capital of Ashoka is the capital, or head, of a column erected by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in Sarnath, India, c. 250 BCE. Its crowning features are four life-sized lions set back to back on a drum-shaped abacus. The side of the abacus is adorned with wheels in relief, and interspersing them, four animals, a lion, an elephant, a bull, and a galloping horse follow each other from right to left. A bell-shaped lotus forms the lowest member of the capital, and the whole 2.1 metres (7 ft) tall, carved out of a single block of sandstone and highly polished, was secured to its monolithic column by a metal dowel. Erected after Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism, it commemorated the site of Gautama Buddha's first sermon some two centuries before.
Dhamma is a set of edicts that formed a policy of the 3rd Mauryan emperor Ashoka the Great, who succeeded to the Mauryan throne in modern-day India around 269 B.C.E. Ashoka is considered one of the greatest kings of ancient India for his policies of public welfare.
Mauryan polish describes one of the frequent characteristics of architecture and sculptures of the Maurya Empire in India, which gives a very smooth and shiny surface to the stone material, generally of sandstone or granite. Mauryan polish is found especially in the Ashoka Pillars as well as in some constructions like the Barabar Caves. The technique did not end with the empire, but continued to be "used on occasion up to the first or second century A.D.", although the presence of the polish sometimes complicates dating, as with the Didarganj Yakshi. According to the archaeologist John Marshall: the "extraordinary precision and accuracy which characterizes all Mauryan works, and which has never, we venture to say, been surpassed even by the finest workmanship on Athenian buildings".
Kaundinya I, also known as Hùntián, Hỗn Điền and Preah Thong, was the second monarch of Funan which comprises much of Cambodia located in mainland Southeast Asia centered on the Mekong Delta. He was the consort of the first monarch Soma, Queen of Funan, also known as Liǔyè (Chinese) and Neang Neakii (Khmer) and together both were the co-founders of the kingdom of Funan with the capital located at Vyadhapura.
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