When Bibek Debroy resigned from the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies and PHDCCI, the Centre for Policy Research smelled an opportunity. I immediately called him up and offered a professorship. He was gracious enough to accept it. But he had one concern. He said he was planning to devote much of his time to the translation of the Mahabharata. He would continue to do policy work. But he needed space for this project. I was in awe of his audaciousness. I said something to the effect that this made him even more attractive to the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). But I told him I had one concern. Since the 19th century, no one who had attempted an English translation of the whole of the Mahabharata had lived to see it completed. I did not want him to tempt fate. He replied, “I feel I was born to do this. I will defy the odds.” He joined the CPR immediately.
Much will be written about Bibek’s intellectual brilliance, his preternatural grasp of almost all subjects, his photographic memory, his command of factual detail, his artistry in photography, and his myriad contributions to public policy. The word polymath seems to only circumscribe the range of his achievements, not describe it. What struck me most in that conversation about the Mahabharata was his character: His extraordinary tenacity, a sense of being possessed, as if he were following some inner law of his own being. By sheer determination, he defied the odds and how, not just producing a translation of the Mahabharata, but even more ambitiously, the Puranas. For those who saw him up close, the sheer physicality of this project was daunting: Producing thousands of words per day for almost two decades. Even in meetings he was typing away on his Blackberry or phone, awkwardly drawn close to his already strained eyes. The sheer grit of the project would deserve an award all its own.
But ultimately, he could not defy the calling of Yama. I had a wonderful Diwali message from him at 9.15 am, the day before he passed on, the day he called, “panchotsava.” But you got the sense, at least from the outside, that it was an ultimate call he was in no mood to defy, leaving us much too soon at the age of 69. I saw little of him the last few years since both of us moved on from the CPR. He had been seriously ill last year, but had recovered. At our last meeting a few weeks ago he was talking almost as if he had a premonition that he might be moving to a higher station. At least on that occasion, he had a sense of radiant calm at the prospect.
We were discussing one topic that we had incessantly touched on for years. Texts were important to the recovery of Indian traditions, and he had done more in this vein than anyone in his generation. But we also had a sense, in different ways, that dealing just with texts was not enough. The sense of these texts was clear, but the references were not. It was a bit like reading philosophy of science texts, without any sense of what the practice of science might be like. It is like reading a meta discourse about an object without experiencing the object itself. He took off from that point to say that he was practising a new form of Shiv Aradhana, and was beginning to finally have a sense of luminescence. Hope he finds it.
To reveal this is not to betray any confidences. But it is to point out that in a city like Delhi, where intellectual life has a lot of glittering surfaces, Bibek always seemed to have unplumbed depths. You peel one layer off and another emerges. I did not know him as well as many others, and did not regularly hang out with him. But as you grow older you realise what matters is the quality and depth of encounters, not their frequency. I almost got the sense that it was impossible to really know Bibek, there was something enigmatic about him that the encyclopedic knowledge of facts, droll humour, policy wonkishness, his love of pens, photography and dogs, candour about people, the torrent of written words was only disguising.
It is a measure of Bibek’s achievement that his towering feat of translations will stand out for the ages. Many five-star economists have got more credit for India’s economic reforms. But few had the kind of impact in changing our default sensibility to economic liberalisation as Bibek did. There is no aspect of economic reform which was not touched by his intellectual prowess: Trade reform, legal reform, regulatory reform and his shepherding of the committee of reform of the Railways. He was one of the rare economists who consistently maintained a liberalisation-oriented outlook, but could really dive into arcane details of law and regulation.
We used to tease him by saying that he secretly had a bureaucratic mind: No one outside the bureaucracy could remember sub-clause X of clause Y of sub-section Z of thousands of statutes and dig them up when necessary. In retrospect you can see the continuity with his translation work: He had a shastric mind, a practitioner of the mnemonic arts who could absorb whole bodies of texts. It is also extraordinary to think that there was a moment in Indian intellectual life when the most brilliant constellation of economic liberalisers was with the Congress and a Bibek Debroy was heading the Rajiv Gandhi Institute.
Bibek’s outlook was broad-minded. His political allegiances were always enigmatic. It was his co-authored report while at the CPR where he laid a lot of the intellectual groundwork for decimating the Left’s economic model in Bengal that helped pave the way for the TMC. Even when he joined this government, except for the awkward spectacle of having to defend demonetisation, he managed the artful feat of staying above the fray: Writing more between the lines. But more miraculously, unlike almost everyone in this government, he did not succumb to the path of rank communalism to prove his allegiances. In both partisan alignments, first with Congress and then the BJP, he managed to remain his own person, as evidenced in the outpouring for him.
His own person he remained: Self-driven, mysterious, funny, but always industrious. He could also be, on occasion, quite exasperating, making no room for norms other than his own; his silences could sometimes be strategic. But the magnitude of his impact is easy to miss, paradoxically because it was so far-reaching across so many domains.
The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express
It is a measure of Bibek’s achievement that his towering feat of translations will stand out for the ages. Many five-star economists have got more credit for India’s economic reforms. But few had the kind of impact in changing our default sensibility to economic liberalisation as Bibek did. (C R Sasikumar) 
Share
