Patna: In Patna, there was just one place one could have found Nobel Prize winners like Amartya Sen and Joseph E. Stiglitiz, and economist Lord Meghnad Desai scrolling along the corridors — the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), established by Dr Shaibal Gupta in 1991.
Gupta, who Thursday died of a chronic ailment he had been fighting for the last decade, left behind a legacy. He was 67 years old.
“Shaibal will be remembered for three things — he was an institution builder, he was an excellent scholar on social, economic and political issues of Bihar, and he understood Bihar politics like no one else,” said ADRI’s incumbent director Dr P.P. Ghose.
Gupta’s contributions through ADRI are highlighted when one takes into account that successive governments, under Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, depended on him for documenting and auditing social and economic issues related to Bihar.
“He established ADRI and took it to great heights… as it became an institute in Bihar that has international recognition. Institutes like the London School of Economics established a centre in ADRI,” said Dr D.N. Diwakar of the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies.
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A man of many admirers
Diwakar has known Gupta since 1982. When Gupta was a student at B.N. College in Patna, he wasn’t one to score good marks, but still had a knack for academics, recollects Diwakar.
“I advised him to go for academics. He did it. He established ADRI, and through his focus and hard labour, turned it into a reference point,” said N.K. Choudhary, a former teacher of Gupta’s who added that “Shaibal was like a family member”.
For the government, Shaibal Gupta would become indispensable.
“We keep worrying about his health condition because we need him for our programmes,” remarked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in 2017 when attending the silver anniversary of ADRI.
CM Nitish, to whom Gupta had been an intellectual ally, called the death a “personal loss” and said Gupta’s last rites will be performed with full state honours.
The academician was also an integral part of Bihar’s finance ecosystem. “We used his service for bringing out the annual economic survey for Bihar and making a memorandum for finance commissions. His advice on economics was essential in our programs,” said former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who was the state finance minister for two terms between 2005 and 2020.
While Bihar has gained more notability for its politics and the crime rate, Gupta strove to make a difference. “You cannot let events happening in the state bog you down. Keep doing positive things,” he told this reporter once.
Wanted special status for Bihar
Dr Shaibal Gupta strongly supported the idea of a special status for Bihar, and played an important role in Nitish Kumar’s demands for the same. In 2007, he was a member of the Raghuram Rajan Committee that authored a report on the demand.
Gupta submitted a note of dissent when the committee didn’t favour the notion.
“Overpopulation is a bigger problem than sparse population,” he countered since sparse population is a criteria for awarding special status.
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