The author’s professional involvement with Calcutta began with his census taking of the primate city in 1951 and continued through his work in the Development and Commerce and Industries Departments of West Bengal up to 1958. Thereafter, the Census of India in 1961, followed by two long spells in the planning Commission and another nine years of teaching and research in Jawaharlal Nehru University during 1973-83 enabled him to widen and deepen his perceptions. The ten essays together with the Preface selected from among two dozen papers presented on various occasions between 1959 and 1989 bring out the eve of her tercentenary in 1990. They, as the Preface spells out, have a unity of focus and concern on the role and future of the city in the context of West Bengal and the Eastern Region.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ashok Mitra
Ashok Mitra has had a fabulous academic career, including a brilliant Ph.D. under Jan Tinbergen, and he has held important offices in the economic administration of India; he was Chairman of the Agricultural Prices Commission and Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. He has taught in some of the premier institutions in India; and academic work took him to many places of higher learning all over the world. But throughout these years, his deep commitment to the cause of the people had found constant expression in overt and covert political action and in a stream of stimulating writing, both learned and popular, in English as well as Bangla. The long stint as Minister of Finance in the Left Front Government of West Bengal from 1977 onwards was, in fact, a culmination and a beginning for a man of enormous intellectual and political energy. He was also a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) for a time. His involvement in Leftist politics is still as active as ever and his writing has continued, as this book demonstrates. Dr. Mitra and his wife Gauri live in Kolkata.
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