THE dominant intellectual passion in the life of Dr Arun Kumar Ghosh, the renowned economist who passed away on June 22, was what I would call anti-imperialism. This was the common thread that ran through all the different phases of his life, and bound together all the apparently different roles which he played with such great distinction in his eventful career: an academic researcher, a civil servant, a passionate advocate of decentralised planning, and a fighter against the neo-liberal economic policies being imposed on our country.

Born in 1923 to Bengali parents located in the then United Provinces, Arun Ghosh studied for his BA and MA in Economics at the Allahabad University and later went to the London School of Economics (LSE) for his doctoral work.

Arun Ghosh's LSE years coincided with the heady days of Indian planning when Professor P C Mahalanobis would go all over the world, picking up brilliant young Indian economists who were completing studies in major foreign universities, for recruitment into the Indian Statistical Institute which was then associated with much of the technical work behind the plan exercise. Mahalanobis recruited Ghosh to the ISI. From here, Ghosh moved to the government of India where he served, till his retirement, in various capacities, including as the chairman of the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices. Upon retiring from government service, he headed the West Bengal State Planning Board, at Jyoti Basu's request, as its vice chairman. This gave him an opportunity to practise decentralised planning at first hand. Arun Ghosh was truly one of the architects of decentralised planning in West Bengal.

Shortly after Arun Ghosh returned to Delhi from his stint in West Bengal, the V P Singh-led Janata Dal government asked him to join the Planning Commission. Later, with his resignation from the Planning Commission, Ghosh plunged into the role of an activist with an energy that would have done a person even a third of his age proud. He went about exposing the harmful consequences of "liberalisation" in gatherings all over the country. He combined his expertise in economics with his experience as a civil servant to fight what he rightly perceived as a recolonisation of the Indian economy.

Of special significance was his fight against the amendment to the Indian Patents Act to make it "TRIPS-compatible." As a member of the National Working Group he fought the move till the very end.

Being engaged in the struggle against neo-liberal economic policies did not make Arun Ghosh impervious to the other danger that faced the country during the nineties --- the danger of communal fascism.

If Arun Ghosh's integrity and commitment to the national cause was absolute, so was the goodness of his heart. But what was really unique about him was that despite being "good," he was also a fighter. There was an unshakable core to him. Neither would his generosity shake this core nor would the unshakability of this core take away an iota from his generosity. Precisely because this combination of "goodness" with the willingness to relentlessly fight in the interests of the people, is so rare, Arun Ghosh's passing away will leave a void in our national life.