Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Briefly
Nov 13, 2022: The Times of India
The Economist described India’s statistical system as “crumbling”. How did we go from pioneering data-driven planning to this? Nikhil Menon, historian and author of ‘Planning Democracy: How a Professor, an Institute, and an Idea Shaped India’ tells Sharmila Ganesan Ram about the history of Indian planning and its ties to P C Mahalanobis
■ What sparked your interest in writing a book on post-colonial planning in India?
Believe it or not, there was a time when planning was fashionable—a buzzword. Five Year Plans were once a theme in Bollywood movies and songs! My book explains how planning became so central to the story of modern India.
■ You also highlight the life of Mahalanobis. Tell us about how a scientist became India’s pioneering statistician.
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was one of the most influential Indians of his generation—a brilliant scientist, academic, and powerful technocrat. While training to be a physicist in Cambridge, his interest in statistics was sparked by a chance encounter with a journal of statistics in the library at King’s College. This led to a long transformation from being a physicist to founding the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931 and eventually becoming one of the foremost statisticians in the world. Meanwhile, as the Indian National Congress under Subhas Chandra Bose committed independent India to a planned economy, statistics on the economy was the need of the hour. Mahalanobis and the Indian Statistical Institute were optimally placed to deliver it, opening the doors to the Planning Commission.
■ How would you describe his role in the making of modern India?
Mahalanobis and the Indian Statistical Institute were responsible for establishing India’s data infrastructure. They brought the first computers to India and designed theNational Sample Survey, which plays a key role in policy-making to this day. Most significantly, perhaps, Mahalanobis was the author of the Second Five Year Plan (1956-61)—an enormously influential and controversial document which provided the blueprint that India’s economy followed until the market reforms in the 1990s.
■ What was his contribution to the global statistical system?
Put simply, large-scale sample surveys. Angus Deaton, the Nobel prize-winning economist, wrote that when it came to instituting sample surveys of household income and expenditure, “Where Mahalanobis and India led, the rest of the world has followed”. The World Bank’s flagship household survey program can trace its lineage back to India’s National Sample Survey.
■ What does ‘Digital India’ owe to the pioneering statistician?
We must remember that in the early 1950s, computers were a new, extremely rare, and exorbitantly expensive technology. A single computer could cost a million dollars! It was also shrouded in mystery. This was because in the countries where they were being manufactured they were used for military purposes at first. Mahalanobis saw how useful they would be in helping with the National Sample Survey calculations and in planning and economic development. He spent nearly a decade criss-crossing the globe in their pursuit. He explained, cajoled, pleaded with governments and aid agencies. When India received its first computers—from the UK and the Soviet Union—it was a direct result of his involvement.
■ Can you give us a peek into the highlight of India’s first National Sample Survey?
Started in 1950, it was the biggest and most comprehensive sampling inquiry ever in the world. The challenges were enormous. The initial sample was 1,800 villages out of India’s 5,60,000 villages. The Institute was short-staffed and needed to negotiate 15 languages and 140 local systems of measurement.
Mahalanobis would write in his diary about forested areas in Orissa where investigators needed armed guards and the snowclad Himalayan passes they had to scale. In other parts, they feared for their lives because of man-eating tigers!
■ Were there any aspects about him that stood out to you during your research?
There are too many to recount! I found it amusing, for instance, that people referred to him as ‘The Professor,’ despite there being scores of other professors around. In terms of his personality, he was known to be serious (except with his pets which included cows, cats, and dogs), self-assured (except about economics), and tremendously talented (but also notoriously arrogant).
■ In your book, you describe the Indian planning project as “an arranged marriage between Soviet-inspired economic planning and western-style liberal democracy”.
I used this metaphor because during the Cold War, planning and democracy were seen to be institutionally incompatible and ideologically contradictory. So, India’s choice to put these two together was a leap of faith.
■ What about India’s statistical system now?
There has been an institutional decay due to insufficient funding, and more perniciously, on account of political interference. Earlier this year, The Economist described India’s statistical system as “crumbling”. It is because, as I say in my book, “good data isn’t always good politics”, and so we’ve seen National Sample Survey results suppressed, and other studies discontinued when it appears that they convey politically uncomfortable facts.
