# P. R. Brahmananda

Palahalli Ramaiya Brahmananda (27 September 1926 – 23 January 2003) was an Indian economist known for his contributions to monetary economics and development policy. He co-developed the wage goods model with C. N. Vakil in 1956, contributed to India's anti-inflation policies during the economic crisis of the 1970s, and published over 150 books and 1,000 articles. I. G. Patel, a former chief economic advisor to the Indian government, called him a "quintessential professional economist."

## Early life and education

Brahmananda was the eldest of four children of P. R. Ramaiya, a former Member of the Legislative Assembly member and Kannada journalist, and P. R. Jayalakshamma, former deputy mayor of Bengaluru. He was born in Mysore State and grew up in Bengaluru with his siblings and extended family. The nationalist politics of his father and uncles influenced Brahmananda, who immersed himself in the biographies of national figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and Jawaharlal Nehru.
He went to school in Bengaluru at the Fort High School in Chamrajpet before moving to Mysore for his undergraduate education at Maharaja's College. At Maharaja's College, he was an active student leader, organizing protests, sit-ins, and lectures. He also played basketball and cricket and developed an interest in economics. His teachers at the college, including S. L. Rama Rao, Thirumalachar, M. H. Gopal, and S. L. N. Simha, have been credited with fostering his interest in adapting economic theories to an Indian context.
After earning his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mysore, he moved to Mumbai in 1946 to pursue a master's degree in economics from Mumbai University (then University of Bombay). He joined the Department of Economics at Mumbai University as a research assistant to Professor C. N. Vakil in 1949. Despite securing a high rank, he did not pursue a career in the Indian Administrative Services (IAS).

## Academic career

In 1949, Brahmananda joined Mumbai University as a research assistant, and in 1953, he obtained his PhD with his thesis "Studies in Economics of Welfare Maximisation" under the guidance of D.T. Lakdawala. It was later published as a book by the Bombay University Press. He worked there for 37 years, eventually becoming the Reserve Bank of India Endowment Professor in Monetary Economics in 1962 and the Director of the Department of Economics in 1976, until his retirement in 1986.
In his last year at Mumbai University, he was also a visiting professor at the Delhi School of Economics. Following retirement, he was a UGC National Fellow and ICSSR National Fellow. He was also an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC) and an Honorary Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in Bengaluru until his death in 2003.
Throughout his career, he held various positions in economics academia, and government. He was the president of the Diamond Jubilee Conference (1976) and the chairman of the Platinum Jubilee Committee (1993–94) of the Indian Economic Association. He was a member of the panel of economists to the Planning Commission and Finance Ministry and was an honorary economic advisor to the Government of Maharashtra after its formation. In 1996 he was awarded The Outstanding Economist award by Financial Express. In 2002 he was made the Honorary President of the International Economic Association.

## Contributions to economics
### Development - the Wage Goods Model

In late 1956, Brahmananda and CN Vakil published "Planning for an Expanding Economy," criticizing the focus on capital goods and heavy industries in the Second Five-Year Plan. DM Nachane called it Brahmananda's "lasting contribution to Indian Economics." Brahmananda and Vakil believed that this strategy was inequitable and, in a capital-scarce country like India, would lead to limited investment in crucial sectors. They also believed it would lead to inflation as demand for consumer goods increased with increasing incomes. As an alternative to the Mahalanobis strategy of the Second Five-Year Plan, Brahmananda and Vakil devised the Wage Goods Model.
This strategy advocated prioritizing wage goods, meaning commonly consumed goods and services such as food grains, milk and milk products, fish, eggs, meat, salt, sugar, soaps, medicines, and essential needs like basic education, healthcare facilities, and electricity. Vakil and Brahmananda believed that prioritizing these sectors would eliminate the demand and supply gap for these goods, which would be essential to removing poverty, unemployment, and disguised unemployment.
However, in a meeting of the Panel of Senior Economists, 20 of the 21 members approved the Mahalanobis five-year plan, and the Indian government adopted it. This strategy continued to influence future five-year plans. In a later interview, Brahmananda said that their criticism of the Second Five-Year Plan led to him and Vakil being excluded from official meetings related to planning. "Anyone who attacked the Mahalanobis model at that time was condemned as an anti-national or worse, a CIA agent," he told VN Balasubramian. Throughout his life, Brahmananda refined the concepts of the Wage goods model.

### Engagement with development theory and classical economics

Brahmananda was interested in the theoretical aspects of Economics. His major contribution to economic theory was the reconstruction of classical economics for developing countries, and he provided conceptual refinements to many precepts of welfare economics. In 1961, Piero Sraffa of Cambridge University released his book "Production of commodities by means of commodities,” a reworking of Ricardian value theory. Brahmananda was the first economist to praise and critique Sraffa's theory, lecturing on it six times and writing three articles between 1962 and 1963. Sraffa considered the articles an achievement, and Jacob Viner thought them equal to Sraffa's in abstraction and thought.
He conducted a parallel exercise to the 'Sraffa Revolution' in search of an invariant measure of value and is credited with enriching India's monetary traditions. In monetary theory, Brahmananda focused on the effect of commodity hoarding on output and prices in developing countries. He also developed a general theory of the rate of interest incorporating ideas of Bohm-Bawerk, Schumpeter, and Sraffa.

### Monetary economics and anti-inflation policies

In February 1974, when inflation in India reached 25.3%, Brahmananda prepared a memorandum with proposals to reduce inflation and submitted it to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The memorandum, ‘A policy to contain inflation,’ was supplemented with a Scheme of the Economists for Monetary Immobilization through Bond Medallions and Blocked Accounts, also called SEMIBOMBLA. The memorandum, supported by 140 economists, is believed to have influenced the anti-inflation policies announced in July 1974.
The memorandum urged the government to immobilize 30% of the money supply by partially remonetizing and issuing liquid savings bonds and blocking accounts with fixed interests. Other proposals included setting a 5% annual limit for increasing money supply and maintaining foreign exchange reserves equal to the value of import requirements for 6 months. It also advocated for an increase in bank rates and the freezing of wages, dividends, and profits.
While the proposal to limit money supply growth to 5% was ruled out, ordinances were issued for compulsory deposit of additional wages, and cutting down of dividends, and the bank rate was increased from 7% to 9%.
From the beginning, his statements and papers on the Indian economy, including government policies, received public attention. He remained independent from government commitments, enabling him to present standpoints that were often unpalatable to authorities. He advocated for the autonomy of the Reserve Bank of India. Reasons for the occasional lack of acceptance of Brahmananda's ideas were that (a) they were often ahead of their time and (b) they were couched in pedagogic terms.

### Teaching career

He inspired generations of students. He was popular among economics teachers in Indian colleges and universities. Throughout his teaching career at Mumbai University, he regularly offered courses in development economics, monetary theory, and central banking. He also guided 40 students in their doctoral studies. For his decades of teaching in Economics, he was awarded the Best Teacher Award by the Government of Maharashtra. Brahmananda was the editor of the Indian Economic Journal almost since its inception in 1952–53. His organizational skills and editorial acumen have been credited for the journal's success. He inspired college teachers to think and write and urged them to contribute to the journal, helping them gain confidence in research and writing papers.

### Final years, death and legacy

Brahmananda never married, leading to the saying that he was married to economics. He wrote two books in the last few years of his life–a history of economic thought from a classical point took the form of ‘Nobel Economics’ in 1999. Commenting on the book, Robert Solow said "this is a work of remarkable scope for a single scholar to write." His last work, ‘Money, Income, Prices in 19th Century India' is a historical, qualitative, and theoretical study. Lord Meghnad Desai said that the book is a monumental monetary history and a source of information on the Indian economy and on high points of the monetary history of many other nations.
Brahmananda passed away on 23 January 2003 at the age of 76 in his home in Bengaluru. His death was widely covered, with multiple news organizations publishing obituaries. The Financial Express called him the "unsung hero of Indian economics" and said that, "his knowledge of economic theory and the grip on empirical economics was almost encyclopedic".
In 2004, the Reserve Bank of India instituted the P R Brahmananda Memorial Lecture Series in his memory. The inaugural lecture was delivered by Lord Meghnad Desai in September 2004. Four more lectures were delivered until 2018. In 2009, the Professor P R Brahmananda Endowment Research Grant was set up at the Institute for Social and Economic Change as an annual research award on monetary policy.