Bibek Debroy


Bibek Debroy was an Indian economist who chaired both the Indian Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council and a Finance Ministry expert committee on infrastructure, contributing significantly to game theory, economic theory, and the study of income and social inequalities, law reforms and railway reforms. From 2015 until 2019, Debroy was a member of an Indian government think tank known as NITI Aayog. He was also a prolific translator of major Sanskrit works — including the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata and several Purāṇas — into English.
Debroy's magnum opus, Inked in India, co-authored with Sovan Roy, is a comprehensive catalogue of India's fountain pen, nib, and ink manufacturers.
India awarded him Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian honour, in 2015 and, posthumously, Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honour, in 2025.
He received Lifetime Achievement awards from the US-India Business Summit in 2016 and from the Australia India Chamber of Commerce in 2022.
In February 2024, Debroy was conferred an Insolvency Law Academy emeritus fellowship, in recognition of his leadership, public service work and contributions to the insolvency field.
Debroy died on 1 November 2024, at the age of 69, a month after his admission to All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

Early life

Debroy was born in Shillong, Assam, on 25 January 1955. His grandparents had migrated from Pail, Habiganj in Sylhet, now in Bangladesh; his paternal grandfather and his father migrating as late as 1948. His father went on to join the Indian Audit and Accounts Service.
Bibek Debroy started his school education at Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur, then at Kolkata Presidency College and Delhi School of Economics. Later, Debroy went to the University of Cambridge on a Trinity College scholarship, where, under the tutelage of Frank Hahn, a noted British economist, he worked on integrating information into a general equilibrium framework, was granted as MSc degree and returned to work in India.

Career

Economics

Debroy's earlier positions included director of Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, consultant to the Department of Economic Affairs of Finance Ministry, and director of the project LARGE, set up by the Finance Ministry and United Nations Development Programme to examine legal reforms in India. Between December 2006 and July 2007, he was the rapporteur for implementation in the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor. Debroy authored several books, papers and popular articles, was consulting editor of Indian financial newspapers, and was a member of the National Manufacturing Competitive Council. He chaired a Jharkhand state committee to recommend a state development plan. He has been a Member of the Chief Minister's Economic Advisory Council in Rajasthan.
From 2014 to 2015, he chaired a Ministry of Railways committee set up to restructure Indian Railways. Debroy had also taught at Presidency College, Calcutta, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and the National Council of Applied Economic Research.
From January 2015 till June 2019, he was a permanent member of NITI Aayog, which replaced the former Planning Commission to act as an Indian government think tank.
In September 2017, he was appointed Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, and from September 2018 to September 2022, was President of the Indian Statistical Institute. In September 2022, he was appointed Chancellor of Pune’s Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute. In July 2024, Debroy was also appointed the Chancellor of the Gokhale [Institute of Politics and Economics], where he served till September 2024. Debroy was a Reader in Economics at Centre for the Study of East European Economies, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Savitribai Phule Pune University, from March 1983 to March 1987.

Literature and media

Debroy translated the unabridged Mahābhārata into English, in a series of 10 volumes. He has also translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Harivamsa, the Vedas and Valmiki's Rāmāyaṇa. He has translated the Bhagavata Purana, the Brahma Purana, the Shiva Purana, the Brahmanda Purana and the Vishnu Purana, Markandeya Purana and Kurma Purana.
He was the first person since Manmatha Nath Dutt to have translated the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, both in unabridged form, into English. For his translations, he was conferred the R. G. Bhandarkar Memorial Award in July 2023 by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
The reception by experts in the popular press has been generally favourable. Business Standard, reviewing his translation of Ramayana, admired Debroy's lucidity and addition of explanatory footnotes. Arshia Sattar, reviewing the same work for The Indian Express, applauded his translation of the two major Sanskrit epics and praised his introduction to the text as well as literal translation; notwithstanding the relatively poor scholarly apparatus vis-à-vis Goldman, Debroy's was held to be more compact and accessible. Hindustan Times, reviewing the translation of Mahabharata, commended his academic-like rigour and passion; it spoke favourably of Debroy's choice of words—modernised yet true to the Sanskrit source, and sprinkling of mathematical details in notes. According to a review of Shiva Purana in News18,
Bibek Debroy's translation of the Shiva Purana is lauded by Open Magazine.
The review in The Sunday Guardian of Debroy's recent work, "Life, Death and the Ashtavakra Gita," praises the book for successfully combining Bibek Debroy's literal translation of the Ashtavakra Gita with Hindol Sengupta's personal reflections.
In contrast, Willis Goth Regier, director of the University of Illinois Press, found Debroy's translation of Ramayana to be poor and lacking, inferior to that of Robert P. Goldman.

Media

Debroy anchored Itihasa, a show telecasted on Sansad TV, the official channel of Parliament of India. The series is a journey to discover what is "Bharata", what it means to be "Bhartiya" and what it means in terms of India's Sanatana Sanskriti.

Economics

  • India: Redeeming the Economic Pledge, Academic Foundation, 2004 .
  • Transforming West Bengal, Changing the Agenda for an Agenda for Change, jointly with Laveesh Bhandari, February 2009 .
  • India Labour Report 2008 – The Right to Rise: Making India's Labour Markets Inclusive," jointly with Laveeesh Bhandari, TeamLease Services, 2009 .
  • India Labour Report 2009 – The Geographic Mismatch & A Ranking of Indian States by their Labour Ecosystem, jointly with Laveesh Bhandari, TeamLease Services, 2010 .
  • Economic Freedom of the States of India 2011, Academic Foundation, 2011, jointly with Swaminathan Aiyar and Laveesh Bhandari .
  • The India Mosaic – Searching for an Identity, Academic Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Delhi, 2004, jointly edited with D. Shyam Babu .
  • Agenda for Improving Governance, Academic Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Delhi 2004 .
  • Integrating the Rural Poor into Markets, India Development Foundation and International Development Enterprises, Academic Foundation, Delhi 2004 .
  • Small-Scale Industry in India, Large Scale Exit Problems, jointly edited with Laveesh Bhandari, Academic Foundation, Friedrich Naumann Stiftung and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2004 .
  • Energizing Rural Development through Panchayats, jointly edited with P.D. Kaushik, Academic Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2004.
  • Reforming the Labour Market, jointly edited with P.D. Kaushik, Academic Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2004 .
  • Uses and Misuses of Anti-Dumping Provisions in World Trade, A Cross-Country Perspective, jointly edited with Debashis Chakraborty, Academic Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2006 .
  • The Trade Game, Negotiation Trends at WTO and Concerns of Developing Countries, jointly edited with Debashis Chakraborty, Academic Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2006 .
  • Judicial Reforms in India, Issues and Aspects, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies and Academic Foundation, 2007, jointly edited with Arnab Kumar Hazra .
  • Anti-Dumping, Global Abuse of a Trade Policy Instrument, jointly edited with Debashis Chakraborty, Liberty Institute and Academic Foundation, 2007 .
  • India Health Report 2010, edited with Ajay Mahal and Laveesh Bhandari, Indicus Analytics and Business Standard Books, 2010 .
  • Corruption in India – The DNA and the RNA, jointly with Laveesh Bhandari, Konark Publishers, 2011,
  • Gujarat: Governance for Growth and Development, Academic Foundation, 2012. https://books.google.com/books?id=4iCuNAEACAAJ&q=gujarat+growth+for+governance+and+development
  • Economic Freedom of the States of India, 2012, jointly with Laveesh Bhandari, Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar and Ashok Gulati, Academic Foundation, 2013.
  • Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform, jointly with Ashley Tellis and Reece Trevor, Carnegie Endowment,
  • Meghalaya, On the Paths to Prosperity, 2014, Aakhya Media Services,, https://web.archive.org/web/20150710215729/http://www.aakhyamedia.com/index.php/product/meghalaya/
  • Footprints... The Story of Chhattisgarh, 2016, Aakhya Media Services,
  • India 2047, Voices of the Young, edited, 2017, Academic Foundation,, http://academicfoundation.org/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=821
  • Indian Railways, The Weaving of a National Tapestry, jointly with Sanjay Chadha and Vidya Krishnamurthi, Portfolio/Penguin, 2017,, https://web.archive.org/web/20170129164338/http://penguin.co.in/book/uncategorized/indian-railways/
  • India @ 70, Modi @ 3.5, Capturing India's transformation under Narendra Modi, jointly edited with Ashok Malik, Wisdom Tree, 2017,
  • Ideas for India, Faster, Higher, Stronger, Wisdom Tree, 2017,
  • On the Trail of the Black, Tracking Corruption, jointly edited with Kishore Arun Desai, Rupa Publications, 2017,, http://rupapublications.co.in/books/on-the-trail-of-the-black-tracking-corruption/
  • Making of New India, Transformation Under Modi Government, jointly edited with Anirban Ganguly and Kishore Desai, Wisdom Tree, 2019.
  • The Railway Chronicles, Synergy Books India, 2019.
  • Reason and Reform, How Policy Reforms have Shaped India, jointly with Diwakar Jhurani, Academic Foundation, New Delhi, 2021,
  • MODI 2.0: A Resolve To Secure India, jointly edited with Ranjit Pachnanda, Anirban Ganguly & Uttam Kumar Sinha, Pentagon Press, New Delhi, 2021, (, http://www.pentagonpress.in/book_details.aspx?this=15121
  • Inked in India: Fountain Pens and a Story of Make and Unmake, jointly with Sovan Roy, Rupa, 2022
  • At the Intersection of Law and Life, Essays in Honour of Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah, jointly edited with Sameer Kochhar, Oakbridge Publishing, 2023,.
  • Modi: Energising a Green Future, jointly edited with R K Pachnanda, Anirban Ganguly & Uttam Kumar Sinha, Pentagon Press, 2023,.

Indology and others

  • Some Aspects of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, 1990, South Asia Books..
  • Sarama and Her Children, The Dog in Indian Myth, Penguin, 2008 .
  • The Bhagavad Gita for You, Har-Anand, 2012.
  • Ujjain – The Land of Simhastha, 2015, Aakhya Media Services, https://web.archive.org/web/20160328223203/http://www.aakhyamedia.com/index.php/shop/
  • The Book of Limericks, Penguin, 2018, https://penguin.co.in/book/poetry/the-book-of-limericks/
  • Manmatha Nath Dutt, Translator Extraordinaire, Rupa, 2020, http://rupapublications.co.in/books/manmatha-nath-dutt-translator-extraordinaire/
  • The Bhagavad Gita for Millennials, Rupa, 2020, https://rupapublications.co.in/books/the-bhagavad-gita-for-millennials/
  • Navaratri: When Devi Comes Home, jointly edited with Anuradha Goyal, Rupa, 2021,
  • Devi for Millennials, Rupa, 2022,
  • Life, Death and the Ashtavakra Gita, jointly with Hindol Sengupta, Grin Publishing, 2024,, https://www.grinmedia.in/product-page/life-death-and-the-ashtavakra-gita
  • Sacred Songs: The Mahabharata's Many Gitas, Rupa, 2023,.

Major unabridged translations

The following books were all published by Penguin.
  • Bhagavad Gita, a translation, 2006; reprinted as The Bhagavad Gita, 2019,.
  • Mahabharata, 2010-2014, 6,088 pp.; 10 vols. — Vol. 1, ; Vol. 2, ; Vol. 3, ; Vol. 4, ; Vol. 5, ; Vol. 6, ; Vol. 7, ; Vol. 8, 2013. ; Vol. 9, ; Vol. 10,.
  • Harivamsha, 2016; 441 pp.;.
  • Valmiki Ramayana, 2017, 1,536 pp.; 3 vols.,.
  • Bhagavata Purana, 2019, 1,500 pp.; 3 vols. — Vol. 1, ; Vol. 2, ; Vol. 3,.
  • Markandeya Purana, 2019,.
  • Brahma Purana, 2021; 2 vols. — Vol. 1, ; Vol. 2,.
  • Vishnu Purana, 2022,.
  • Shiva Purana, 2023, 3 vols. — Vol. 1, ; Vol. 2, ; Vol. 3,.
  • Brahmanda Purana, 2024, 2 vols. — Vol. 1, ; Vol.2,.