Renowned Economist Amiya Bagchi Passes Away

On 28th November, 2024, Professor Amiya Kumar Bagchi, a distinguished economist, historian, and public intellectual known for his pioneering work on underdevelopment and imperialism, passed away.

Professor Bagchi began his academic journey at Presidency College, Kolkata, before earning his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, where he also served on the Faculty of Economics and Politics.
Initially a mathematical economist and game theorist, he shifted his focus to economic history during his doctoral research, becoming a macroeconomist analyzing historical data.
His groundbreaking book Private Investment in India 1900-1939 is regarded as a cornerstone of anti-colonial historiography, comparable to the works of Dadabhai Naoroji and Romesh Chunder Dutt.
His research on deindustrialization during the colonial period provided conclusive evidence supporting nationalist critiques of imperial economic exploitation.
Bagchi’s article in Economic and Political Weekly (1972) and his subsequent books like The Political Economy of Underdevelopment and Perilous Passage reshaped debates on global capitalism's impact on the Global South.