BIBEK DEBROY AS AN IDEA

He was one of the last examples of a particular worldview which was ever interested in ideas, no matter how eccentric, and knew of curious ways to connect them to help understand the world in more lucid, more intelligent ways. This attribute is sometimes described as 'renaissance'. But, in fact, in India this is a much older trait.

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI hen famous people die, it is often said that W there will not be another like them. But this is true for very few people. Like grains of sand, we are replaceable, and replaced, all too easily.

But some of us are not like that. Like ideas, we persist.

Bibek Debroy was a noted economist, a famed policymaker, and a celebrated Sankritist, this much is well-known. Like the man he most resembled, the 19th century prolific translator Manmatha Nath Dutt, he was working through translating every major Hindu text from Sanskrit to English. It had been said that no one can finish translating both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in one lifetime-but that was before Bibek Debroy took upon the task and finished it, along with many of the major puranas, and much else.

This, above and apart from being the chairperson of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, his last governmental assignment.

Before all of this, he had worked on railway reform, trade policy, and, a particular love of his, fountain pens.

It is easy to forget, or ignore, though, what all of this represented. What Bibek Debroy represented. He was one of the last examples of a particular worldview which was ever interested in ideas, no matter how eccentric, and knew of curious ways to connect them to help understand the world in more lucid, more intelligent ways.

This attribute is sometimes described as "renaissance".

But, in fact, in India this is a much older trait.