T N Srinivasan, who shook traditional economic thinking, is no more

T N Srinivasan breathed his last at the age of 85 on Saturday in Chennai

T N Srinivasan, who died in Chennai on Saturday at 85, provided, along with Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai, an intellectual framework for economic reforms that India undertook in 1991, when the balance of payments crisis hit it hard. 

A Padma Bhushan awardee, TN, as he was popularly called, through his papers showed that the rupee devaluation in 1966 had narrowed the trade deficit. Later, the rupee was devalued twice during the 1991 reforms. Srinivasan, along with Bhagwati, was a critic of protectionist policies of successive governments till then.  

Later taking stock of economic reforms, he wrote in 2003 a