Bibek Debroy was a distinguished Indian economist and author, renowned for his substantial contributions to both economics and literature. He was also a composer of limericks and had translated almost all the classical texts of Hindu mythology from the original Sanskrit to English. Shoma A. Chatterji highlights some lesser-known interests and works of this distinguished economist who passed away on November 1st this year
I have never met Bibek Debroy. Nor did I know of him as an economist. But one day, while researching a book on cinema, I chanced upon a brilliant paper jointly written by Bibek Debroy and Amir Uulla Khan published way back in August 2002. The essay was titled ‘Indian economic transition through Bollywood eyes – Hindi films and how they have reflected changes in India’s political economy’. The paper emerged out of a multi-media film presented by Bibek Debroy, then director (Research), Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS), and Amir Ullah Khan, director, Asia, International Policy Network, for an April 2002 seminar on India’s Political Economy organised by RGICS.
Bibek Debroy was a distinguished Indian economist and author, renowned for his substantial contributions to both economics and literature. I was amazed to learn that Debroy was also a great composer of limericks and had had translated almost all the classical texts of Hindu mythology from the original Sanskrit to English. Here’s what one of the many tributes paid to him upon his sudden demise said: “As a translator, he is best known for his magnificent rendition of The Mahabharata in ten volumes as well as the three-volume Valmiki Ramayana, both of which have been published to wide acclaim by Penguin Classics. He is also the author of Sarama and Her Children, which underscores his interest in Hinduism with his love for dogs.”
The title Sarama and her Children is a bit misleading because it is perhaps the first, and till now, the only analysis of the dog which accompanies the five Pandava brothers of The Mahabharata on their way to heaven. Debroy has tried to trace the perspective of the Indian mindset towards dogs, going back to the epics, the Puranas, the Dharmashastra and the Niti Shashtra to dispel the belief that dogs were traditionally looked down upon by Hindus. He goes on to prove that dogs had a utilitarian role to play during pre-Vedic and Vedic times. This is just one example of his out-of-the-box thinking and also of his interest and research into areas unexpected of an economist of international repute.
Bibek Debroy began his education at the Ramakrishna Mission School in Narendrapur, West Bengal. He then pursued higher studies at Presidency College in Kolkata and the Delhi School of Economics, before going on to the Trinity College, Cambridge. In the paper mentioned above, Debroy and his co-writer have traced the socio-political history of popular Hindi cinema, analysing how they dealt with the changing scenario through the 1940s to the 1980s. Beginning with the post-colonial growth in India, the two authors study 39 popular films. It is to be noted that the authors confine themselves to popular, mainstream Hindi cinema and do not extend their studies to parallel cinema, regional cinema, in different regional languages or to short and documentary films.
It begins with a study of pre-Independence films like England Returned (1921), considered to be the first ‘social satire’ on Indians obsessed with the Western way of life. This was followed by Baburao Painter’s Savkari Pash (The Indian Shylock,1925), which looked at the plight of the Indian peasantry and their exploitation by village moneylenders. Similarly, films like Achhut Kanya (Franz Osten, 1936), Roti(Mehboob, 1942), Aurat (Mehboob, 1940), Sujata (Bimal Roy, 1959), and Do Bigha Zameen (Bimal Roy, 1953), which dealt with issues of caste, urban dehumanisation, economic and gender roles and mass migration of rural population to the cities and their degradation in urban slums, were analysed.
If, according to the authors, the Forties saw “Bollywood’s comments on the New Economic Policy”, the Fifties are seen through two films: Mother India and Naya Daur, which, interestingly, were not only brazenly commercial, but were two of the biggest box office hits of their time. The authors say that during the 1950s, “Raj Kapoor’s Awara, Jagte Raho, Boot Polish, and Shree 420, Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen, Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa and Mr & Mrs 55 all stand as social and cultural documents of those days. The running strand in these films was the abject poverty and unemployment in India.”
And so, the paper goes on, explaining, arguing, reasoning about the socio-political representation of India through fiction that wove in some of the important agendas of the newly independent nation. I scoured the Internet and my personal library for other papers by Bibek Debroy, but drew a blank. One can’t help wondering how, had he written more frequently on Indian cinema, his works would have enriched the subject.
(The writer is a veteran freelance journalist and award-winning film historian. She lives in Kolkata.)
from Webdoux