Prof. Bibek Debroy: The OG Reformer and Economist

Prof. Bibek Debroy in his surreptitious self-obituary, written before his passing away evokes the memories, ideas, understandings, loss and longings against the looming reality of being “passed into oblivion, buried in journal archives”. I am also among those “may remember, with fondness” troupe from whom Prof Debroy didn’t expected an obituary. However, the raging emotions of indebtedness to him are too overpowering to rim in the realm of heart only. It rushed through pen on paper taking the shape of his twin influence on my personality as student of public policy and philosophical underpinnings of pagan religion like Hinduism and a functionary of official statistical system of India.

Firstly, being an avid reader of his articles and columns on public policy over the decades and lately his tour de force of translation of The Mahabharata, it was impossible to be nonchalant when his towering intellectual landscape, ideas, observations, and criticism, all chiseled the intellect and world-view of millions like me. 

On public policy: Prof. Debroy through his numerous articles on the historical legacy and colonial values of Indian bureaucracy articulated the challenges of public administration reforms in India in its political habitat of parliamentary democracy. He grappled the bureaucratic blowback first hand while shepherding the structural and procedural reforms in trade policy, legal and land laws, and mammoth railway reforms in 2015. The comprehensive umbrella of ministerial responsibility and emphasis on public service anonymity and the insistence on secret concerning internal decision making ring-fences deviant public servants from their gross administrative and financial misdemeanors. This is in contrast to presidential system like US characterized by institutional separation of executive and legislature. The federal bureaucracy is answerable to the President (through the cabinet) and these to the public while members of the Congress are directly answerable to the public. Not surprisingly, it is easy to conceive and implement administrative reforms either by Ronald Regan or more recently by Donald Trump who constituted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The DOGE is to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to help his administration tackle government bureaucracy by cutting unnecessary regulations, reducing wasteful spending, and restructuring federal agencies, crucial for the “Save America” movement.

Puranic king-Yayati:   In the self-obituary Prof. Debroy also laments his harsh interpretation of the puranic king-Yayati, morally comatose, who traded his old age with the youth of one of his sons to enjoy sensual and worldly pleasures. Later, he realized the futility of efforts to quench them, and finally returned his youth to his son and accepted old age and death. The puranic story is emblematic of lurking dangers and ensnaring chains of unending lust and ever-growing greed for sublunary pleasures and the attachments and their final futility. 

Yayati is a metaphor for the colonization of human virtues and intelligence to an overriding vice or lust in the character that acts as a nemesis for human agency and wise conduct. Notwithstanding, the timeless puranic tale deeply embedded in the folklore and cultural apparatus viz. literature, plays,  classical dance etc. of Indian society, the lessons drawn in the conduct of our life, roles and status are sparse. 

The ‘Yayati syndrome’ where a person/generation/collectivity refuses to forsake the control, influence and privileges on physical body or the power apparatus viz. politics, business, cinema,  sports etc. is starkly conspicuous. There are ample instances of such stupidity and moral atrophy of human/collective reason in the past and contemporary political and social life of India and other human cultures and nations that engendered avoidable sufferings and loss of human lives.

Recently, historian and author Yuval Noah Harari also diagnosed the contemporary chaos of world order and debilitating democratic institutions and values and consequent mounting human misery to the accelerated and unending cravings. He asserts that “History is accelerating and being fed up (is) one of the deep truths about human nature. The deep, basic reaction of the mind to pleasant experiences is not satisfaction, but craving for more, right? So, the better things become, the more people are dissatisfied. They have more desires, more craving.” Not surprisingly, to Yuval Harari, although America continues to dominate the current world order, economically, militarily, culturally and technologically, yet the slogan MAGA (Make America Great Again) and its electoral prowess exemplifies the deep dissatisfaction in American Society. The metaphor of Yayati holds a mirror for us to rein in the unbridled and insatiable yearnings for the ephemeral worldly pleasures in a transient life that turns us into a moral comatose.

Secondly, on the state of the official statistical system in India, Prof. Debroy torrentially wrote insightful and critical articles over a couple of years. Like oracles, economists read the leaves of socio-economic state of citizenry through systematic data collection through administrative data, periodic census or annual large scale sample surveys on host of population characteristics and indicators. Prof. Debroy deplored the withering away of an enviable legacy in official statistics of India spearheaded and crafted by Prof. P.C. Mahalanobis- Father of Indian Statistics. After all not very far, in 2005, Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton and co-author Valerie Kozel wrote: “Where Mahalanobis and India led, the rest of the world has followed most countries can only envy India in its statistical capacity”.

But being an OG reformer, instead of a lame-duck lamentation, Prof Debroy along with his erudite team members of PM-EAC took up cudgels to see lasting improvements in the official statistical system of India and restore its past unparalleled glory. While Prof Debroy’s articles and columns forensically unravelled the shortcomings of official statistics in India from administrative silos to the methodological chasm, little mention was found about the challenges and systematic career straitjacketing of field officers that stymied plowing back of domain experience gained over decades in qualitative statistics generation.

Stirred by his criticism of the Indian official statistical system as “Janus faced-excellent on the administrative side, mediocre on censuses/surveys” as a stakeholder and participant-observant, I along with my colleagues-office-bearers of the Indian Statistical Officers Association (ISOA) met Prof. Debroy and his erudite team in July, 2023, to share our operational concerns and worm-eye perspective of a quarter century. Prof Debroy and his team were all ears while hearing the challenges of data collection in the changing socio-political milieu and awakened citizenry, redefined role and expectations from the government, snail-paced reforms, structural rigidities and administrative apathy in the career progression of field officers toiling over decades across the length and breadth of the country.

The meeting ended up with creating a panoramic perspective (birds-eye with worm-eye) of challenges and ossified practices straitjacketing even the well-intentioned reforms, though sparse over the years.

Prof. Debroy and his sympathetic team assured us of using the good offices to ameliorate the stunted career prospects and uninspiring service conditions of the field-officers. The team kept its word and among slew of recommendations to rejuvenate the official statistical system it also recommended the structural changes to widen the career prospects of the field-officers. Thank you Prof. Debroy.

Prima facie, the recommendations are transmuting into green shoots of constructive changes after change of guard in April, 2024 with appointment of scholar-administrator as Secretary, MoSPI. Building upon it will be a sincere and lasting tribute to Prof. Debroy.

Despite all these ‘transient and puerile’ dealings of this sublunary life Prof. Debroy piercing intellect was able to see through the maze of dualities of human life, ego, ignorance, attachments, events etc. Prof. Debroy dismisses the possibility of being liberated in body, the timeless teachings of Yajnavalkya Brahma Vidya to King Janaka-The Videha (One liberated in body). However, his intellectual and spiritual journey is a testament to what Krishna in Gita calls ‘prāk śharīra-vimokṣhaṇāt’ (Chapter 5-23), one liberated in the living body for who loses ownership of being the doer and realizes the transient and ephemeral nature of beings and events of life.

(The article was first published in The Sunday Express, December 8,2024 -https://indianexpress.com/article/india/elon-musk-silicon-valley-are-not-elected-they-are-making-the-most-important-decisions-in-our-history-yuval-harari-9712369/).