Dr Subroto Roy on Dr Raja Chelliah

He writes with a dimmed mind by remembering his meeting with Dr Raja that “The institute he founded appears to consist mostly of a name and some buildings and a lot of wasteful bureaucratic public expenditure as is typical of the new Dilli Raj of recent decades.   I recall a heated discussion with two of his successors there in the late 1990s in which they somehow attempted to say they were beyond Government of India control and could do as they pleased (which they had in fact proceeded to do).  Neither could be said to have been familiar with Indian public finance data at the degree of precision necessary to grasp  the fiscal problems Dr Chelliah had warned against.  Like the Planning Commission and similar sets of public buildings, it is all mostly a waste;   Delhi’s “think tanks” have been largely incapable of any real thought.” 

In fact the same point was already raised by another economist Suman Bery, who is also head of NCAER.