Kalyan Sanyal

Kalyan Sanyal was an Indian economist (1952 - February 11, 2012). He was the head of the University of Calcutta economics department and is the author of the important book Rethinking Capitalist Development. Sanyal was regarded as one of the brilliant economists in India. Sanyal's work in the field of international economics and globalization and economic development were acclaimed all over the world.[1]

Work

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Sanyal is best known for his 2011 book Rethinking Capitalist Development (Routledge India 2012) There, he tried to demonstrate that in post-colonial circumstances along with primitive accumulation, a parallel process of the reversal of the effects of primitive accumulation also sets in. As Partha Chatterjee writes in his foreword to the book, Sanyal argued that while growth is important, it is at the same time unacceptable that those who are dispossessed of their means of labor because of primitive accumulation of capital should have no means of subsistence. Thus while on the one side primary producers, such as peasants, craftsmen etc, lose their land and other means of production, on the other they are also provided by the governmental agencies with the conditions for meeting their basic needs of livelihood."


Education

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Sanyal did postgraduate work from Calcutta University in 1971 after graduating from Presidency College. He received a PhD from the University of Rochester in 1973. Sanyal was trained as a trade theorist in the mid-1970s, but he later abandoned neoclassical economics for a Marxist approach to development.

He was attached to the Institute of International Studies, Geneva.

Personal Life

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Kalyan Sanyal died on February 18, 2011 at a private hospital in the Kolkatta. He was 60 and is survived by wife Saswati and two sons Arani and Avik.

His father, the late Abanti Sanyal, was a well-known professor of Bengali literature, and was better known for his command of French. Abanti Sanyal translated many valuable French books into Bengali, and earned the epithet ‘French Abanti’.


References

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Rajat Acharyya, Sugata Marjit, ed. Trade, Globalization and Development: Essays in Honour of Kalyan K. Sanyal

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