An honest former Finance Minister of West Bengal and an extremely learned man in Economics Dr. Ashok Mitra is suffering from old age alignments. None to take care of him today. Sad too sad. Dr. Sujata Mazumdar is treating him in Park Nursing Home.
A brief details:
After completing his graduation from the University of Dacca, he came to India following the partition of India in 1947. Although he attended postgraduate classes in economics at the University of Calcutta, he was refused admission there. He moved to Benaras Hindu University where he earned an M.A. in economics.
He joined the newly established Delhi School of Economics in the early 1950s. Later, he attended the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands. Under the guidance of Professor Jan Tinbergen of the University of Rotterdam, he was awarded a doctorate in economics there in 1953.
He taught as a lecturer in Economics at the University of Lucknow for two years before proceeding to the Netherlands to complete his Ph.D. thesis. He taught at the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East in Bangkok, Thailand before returning to Delhi in 1961. He joined the Economic Development Institute in Washington, DC, as a faculty of economics during the early 1960s. He also worked for the World Bank and then accepted the Professorship in Economics at the newly established Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He was the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, and then Chairman of the Agricultural Prices Commission of the Government of India.
He was Finance Minister of West Bengal from 1977–87. He resigned due to disagreements with the then Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu. In the mid-1990s he became a Member of Rajya Sabha and was Chairman, Parliament’s Standing Committee on Industry and Commerce.
