The Hindu : EPW Editor Krishna Raj passes away

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Sunday, Jan 18, 2004

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EPW Editor Krishna Raj passes away

By Ranjit Hoskote

MUMBAI, JAN. 17. Krishna Raj, noted economist and Editor of the Economic and Political Weekly, passed away in his sleep on Friday night in Mumbai, aged 67. Dr. Raj's demise was sudden, as there had been no history of illness; he had just returned from a visit to the U.S. "His quiet departure was so much in keeping with his modest personality," said his wife, Maithreyi Krishna Raj, when contacted by The Hindu today. Indeed, Dr. Raj remained a reticent presence, even as he presided over a vast and widely ramified republic of discourse from the journal's office, stacked high with books, files and correspondence, at Hitkari House, in Mumbai's colonial Fort quarter.

Dr. Raj took over the editorship of the Economic and Political Weekly, familiarly spoken of by its many readers in India and overseas as the EPW, in 1968, only two years after it had begun publication. The EPW was an avatar of the Economic Weekly, founded in 1949 by the mercurial intellectual Sachin Chaudhuri, who had been, by turns, a market reporter, film critic, editorial writer for Sunday magazines and general manager of the Bombay Talkies film company. Krishna Raj, on the other hand, was a social scientist, an alumnus of the Delhi School of Economics. As helmsman of the new EPW, he maintained his predecessor's high intellectual tone, critical engagement with public issues and diversity of editorial concerns, while also bringing a professional economist's training to bear on the publication. He combined a commitment to conscientious, painstaking research in social sciences with a dedication to diversity of expression. There was no dryness or monotony to the journal, which provided a liberal platform for the sharing of research and the dissemination of opinion, and became one of India's most prestigious social science journals, where young researchers as well as established figures were proud to publish.

During the nearly four decades of Dr. Raj's stewardship, the EPW expanded its scope to embrace development economics as well as debates in post-colonial historiography; money markets and the history of trade as well as studies of poverty; agriculture as well as management and industry. During the 1980s and 1990s, it placed on its agenda the urgent themes of gender, urbanisation, the ideology of politicised religion, and popular culture. Dr. Raj's abiding concern was that the journal ought to reflect, as well as reflect upon, the changing preoccupations of social sciences in India as the nation-state passed from the early post-colonial era into the epoch of globalisation.

Like the journal, its Editor too bridged the realms of journalism, academia and activism. He was actively involved in academic publishing, serving on the editorial boards of journals such as Gender, Technology and Development. He supported the initiatives of liberal-secular activism against the threat of a majoritarian ascendancy, and was a member of the advisory board of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai.

Dr. Raj's lasting achievement was to have steered the EPW dexterously through the various straits of academic controversy, ideological dispute and financial constraint; in this, he was supported by a loyal readership base and by advertisers who respected the journal's independent stand. Paying tribute to the EPW in the September 1999 issue of its near-contemporary and in many ways complementary publication, Seminar, historian Ramachandra Guha traced its lineage to such colonial-period journals of independent opinion as Kamakashi Natarajan's Indian Social Reformer, founded in 1890, and the Modern Review, founded by Ramananda Chatterjee in 1907.

The EPW, writes Dr. Guha, "consistently exposed wrongdoing, whether by the state or political parties or landlords or industrial houses; explored, in refreshing detail, the patterns and processes of social change in city and countryside; and highlighted critical issues (environmentalism, for instance) ignored by the formal political system as well as by the Establishment press." In so doing, Dr. Guha observes, it has come to constitute "a vast and continually enriched archive of the history of independent India, an archive shamelessly raided by generations of students and scholars." Those generations of researchers and academics will feel Dr. Raj's loss keenly, as will the many activists and writers who have formed an extended family around the EPW through the decades.

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