<b>Shreekant Sambrani:</b> Learning from masters

A critical take on academics

I first came to know of Kenneth Joseph Arrow, easily among the brightest post-Keynesian economists who passed away last Wednesday, in 1966. I had just joined the economics doctoral programme at Cornell University after six straight years of engineering education.  The programme advisor, later my dissertation guide, insisted that I enrol in two advanced graduate seminars, one on history of economic thought and the other on the then emerging field of development economics. This latter introduced me to Professor Arrow through his works.

Economics was part of the undergraduate curriculum at my alma mater Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, but