Remembering Dr V K R V Rao, an institution builder

The Bengaluru-based Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), founded in 1972 by renowned economist and former Union Minister Dr V K R V Rao, recently celebrated its golden jubilee. This was Professor Rao’s third institute; the other two were the Delhi School of Economics and the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi. Professor Rao, among the first Indians to obtain a PhD in Economics from Cambridge University and recipient of the prestigious Adam Smith Prize, was a colossus in the academic field in India.

In her address while laying the cornerstone of the ISEC campus in Nagarbhavi on July 11, 1974, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi acknowledged his role as an institution builder when she said, “Dr V K R V Rao’s restlessness and dynamism have found expression in the building of numerous institutions. The country is indebted to him for the centres of study and research he has built in Delhi and now in the region from which he hails.

Rao believed that institutions like ISEC should play a major role in the economic and social transformation of the country.

Although the then-Mysore government, led by Chief Minister Devraj Urs, offered the heritage Carlton House on Palace Road for the Institute’s permanent campus, Dr Rao declined the offer, preferring to be far from the city.

The villagers of Nagarbhavi, where ISEC is located, affectionately call it the ‘VKRV Rao Institute’. The road leading to ISEC has been renamed Padma Vibhushan Dr. V K R V Rao Road by the Bengaluru City Corporation.

He gathered the best minds in the country, such as M N Srinivas (a renowned sociologist), V L S Prakash Rao (a renowned geographer), and others such as G V K Rao, Dr D M Nanjundappa to build and guide the institute. Nobel laureates such as Sir John Hicks and Lady Ursula Hicks, and Karnataka Chief Ministers right from Devaraj Urs to Basavaraj Bommai visited ISEC to participate in its events.

Rao was the first person to estimate British India’s national income in 1936, when there were no computers or calculators.

His study on India’s national income from 1950 to 1980 showed that the Indian economy was marked by structural retrogression.

A major initiative of Professor Rao was conducting inter-disciplinary studies to examine the cluster approach to rural development, using Tumakuru district as a case study. This revealed that the success of this approach would depend on how far property relations and power structures in rural areas were made egalitarian.

Another major study was the Bangalore city survey, under which a goldmine of data was analysed to assess the challenges and opportunities faced by Bengaluru, an emerging metropolis.

If the government had sincerely implemented its recommendations, such as establishing satellite towns, Bengaluru would not have degenerated into the chaotic concrete jungle it is now.

The holding of a National Conference on Centre-State Relations in ISEC by the Government of Karnataka in the mid-1980s was a milestone in which then Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde also participated. Its recommendation to activate the Inter-States Council as envisaged under the Constitution has remained a pipe dream despite tall talk of “co-operative federalism.”

Rao had great foresight that ecological economics would emerge as a major discipline and founded the first Ecology Economics Unit in the country at ISEC in 1981, which undertook pioneering studies on natural resources and the environment.

One of the lasting contributions of ISEC has been its PhD programme, under which many students have been trained and awarded PhD degrees in different social science disciplines.

However, in tune with the general decline in academic standards in the country, the quality of social science research has deteriorated.

Despite talk of autonomy, there is growing interference by the government in the appointment of directors and faculty. Sycophancy and
mediocrity, rather than merit, have become the order of the day.

The government is giving low priority to social science research, with funds being cut off or reduced.

There is also pressure to promote the government’s narrative, which does not augur well for the future of social science research in India.

For example, we are told that 7,000 years before the Wright brothers, Indians invented the aeroplane (pushpaka vimana). But, despite spending thousands of crores over three decades, we have yet to develop an aircraft engine to power our Tejas jets.

(The writer was a PhD student and Professor at ISEC,Bengaluru)