Dr. Malcolm Adiseshaiah was a colourful, multifaceted personality. An academic, who started life at the Madras Christian College, he became an international civil servant who rose to the position of Deputy Director General, UNESCO, and was instrumental in expanding the areas of education in Asia, Africa and Latin America. When he was Vice-Chancellor of Madras University, he brought about several structural reforms in university education. He was a Rajya Sabha MP and presented mid-year reviews of the economy. As a philanthropist, he liberally donated for establishing the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS).

Dr. Adiseshaiah focussed a lot on applied economics, a subject that did not receive much focus earlier in Tamil Nadu in contrast to the several illustrious institutes focussing on this in Delhi!

MIDS and the Malcolm and Elizabeth Adiseshaiah Trust present awards in the name of Malcolm Adiseshaiah for distinguished contributions in social sciences. This year it was presented to Prof. Rajeev Bhargava, Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

I have interacted closely with Malcolm (I had done a four-hour interview with him for the All India Radio archives) and have been covering MIDS right from its inception. I used to admire the regular lectures, seminars and discussions as well as its sound focus on economics and development. Past directors like Dr. C.T. Kurien, S. Guhan and Dr. A. Vaidyanathan directed MIDS to focus on emerging development issues.

I notice with disappointment the focus being given in recent years on social issues with much less stress on development issues. Last year, the award was on the impact of caste. This year, the topic was how Indian secularism was radically different from the Western/European model. Even the monthly programmes appear to deal with social issues and not so much on hard core, current economic issues.

There are plenty of issues crying for attention, such as urban transportation, inflation, stagnation in agriculture, slow- down of investment, the denial of a fair share of natural gas to the State, etc. Discussion on these issues will bring MIDS closer again to what it was established as, an institute dedicated to development (Courtesy: Industrial Economist).