Sanjeev Sanyal

From Bharatpedia, an open encyclopedia


Sanjeev Sanyal
Sanjeev Sanyal Image.jpg
Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM)
Assumed office
22 February 2022
Principal Economic Advisor, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance
In office
21 February 2017 - 20 February 2022
Personal details
Born (1970-08-27) 27 August 1970 (age 53)
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
NationalityIndian
Alma materShri Ram College of Commerce
St John's College, Oxford
Occupation
  • Economist
  • Writer

Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian economist and popular historian.[1] He is a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India.[2] Sanyal has authored several books on Indian history to mixed reviews.[3][4]

Early life and education[edit]

Sanjeev Sanyal was born in Kolkata and studied at St. Xavier's School and St. James' School. He received a Bachelor's degree in economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce followed by a Master's degree from St John's College (1992–1995), where he was a Rhodes Scholar.[5][2]

Career[edit]

Sanyal worked for Deutsche Bank until 2008, leaving to research and write Land of the Seven Rivers, and returned in 2011.[5] By 2015, when he resigned, he was a managing director[lower-alpha 1] and global strategist.[6][7]

In 2017, he was appointed as the Principal Economic Adviser to the Indian Ministry of Finance and helped prepare the 2021–22 Economic Survey of India.[7] In February 2022, he was appointed member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.[2]

Views[edit]

Sanyal has been a vocal critic of Nehruvian socialism, which he deems to have stemmed from an "inward-looking cultural attitude".[1] Nehru and P. C. Mahalanobis are criticized for treating the economy as a "mechanical toy", leaving little scopes for the flourish of private enterprises, and ultimately throttling creativity.[1] Sanyal praises the 1991 liberalisation reforms as the harbinger of Indian Renaissance, and argues for the application of Complex Adaptive Systems framework to economic issues.[5]

Among his most-espoused views is that the historiography of India has been distorted with "Colonial, Nehruvian, and Marxist" biases — thus, requiring a "rewriting" of history by "properly revisiting" primary sources.[1] In The Ocean of Churn, Sanyal argues that the primary sources used in painting a humane image of Ashoka can also be interpreted to reconstruct him as a genocidal tyrant.[1] According to Sanyal, Ashoka did not convert to Buddhism out of laments at the Kalinga War but due to political pressure exerted by the Jains.[8] A host of other sources are invoked to compare Ashoka with "modern day fundamentalists", whose Dhaṃma Mahāmātās were "religious police"; the famed edicts about religious tolerance are read as propaganda.[1][8]

Sanyal blames the Nehruvian project for having established Ashoka as a "great king", and stresses on the urgent need of a post-socialist reading of history.[1] In Sanyal's version of this reading, the central character is Chanakya, a "professor of Political Economy at Taxila university" who had helped Chandragupta Maurya establish a pan-Indian empire and who then wrote Arthashastra about a centralised Mauryan economy.[1] Only when the Arthshastra is retrofitted to India's current political economy —by fixing the judicial system, investing in internal security, and simplifying taxation rules— among other things, Sanyal believes that we can return to the "golden age" of India that had birthed "yoga, algebra, the concept of zero, chess, plastic surgery, metallurgy, Hinduism, [and] Buddhism."[1]

Reception[edit]

Meera Visvanathan, a historian of ancient India, finds Sanyal ignorant of methodologies in historical research.[1] She notes that despite calls to rewrite history, Sanyal's citations remained restricted to mainstream histories and seldom invoked primary sources.[1] In deconstructing the narrative of Ashoka, Sanyal failed to apply source-criticism—subjecting contemporary edicts, Buddhist hagiographies, and Sri Lankan legends to the same treatment—and imposed a host of anachronistic categories.[1] Likewise, Sanyal remained oblivious of recent scholarship—documenting the fuzziness of Mauryan economy or Arthshastra to be the work of multiple post-Mauryan scholars—and misrecognized a shastra of political economy, as it developed in Ancient India, as a manual of Mauryan statecraft.[1] Sanyal's analysis of Mahabharata was deemed to be an exercise in unsubstantiated speculation to fit preconceived notions of history without understanding the methods of interpreting Sanskrit itihasa.[1] Overall, Vishvanathan finds Sanyal's works to be "riddled with holes" but yet, Sanyal's superior writing skills coupled with a logical simplicity that appealed to majoritarian prejudices had ensured popularity among masses.[1]

Manu Pillai, a popular historian, commends The Ocean of Churn for being a "delightful introduction to the world of the Indian Ocean" despite the possibility of professional scholars challenging his narrative and conclusions.[9] He welcomed Sanyal's command over a layered and complex past, his "accessible" yet "captivating narrative", and especially the reevaluation of Ashoka.[9] Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist specializing in science and technology studies, praised the same work for being a feisty, combative, and comprehensive history of Indian Ocean aimed at a general audience but cautioned that "a professional historian might crib".[8] Like Pillai, he commends the "devastating" reconstruction of Ashoka and recovering figures from the margins of history.[8]

Honors[edit]

Sanyal was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in 2007 for his work on urban issues.[2] In 2010, he was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.[5] He has been an Adjunct Fellow of the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore, Fellow of and Senior Fellow of IDFC Institute (Mumbai).[10][11] Sanyal has been a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London, Visiting Scholar at Oxford University, adjunct fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies (Singapore), and a senior fellow of the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund).[2]

Works[edit]

Books[edit]

  • The Indian Renaissance: India's Rise After A Thousand Years of Decline, World Scientific, 2008, 264 p.[12]
  • Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography, Penguin, 2013, 192 p.[13]
  • The Incredible History of India's Geography, Penguin, 2015, 264 p.[14]
  • The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History, Penguin, 2017, 324 p.[15]
  • Life over Two Beers and Other Stories, Penguin, 2018, 232 p.[16]
  • India in the Age of Ideas: Select Writings, 2006-2018, Westland, 2018, 318 p.[17]

Columns[edit]

Sanyal is an occasional columnist for the Hindustan Times,[18] Project Syndicate, The Economic Times,[19] Live Mint,[20] Business Standard, and several other publications.[21][22]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ Deutsche Bank has many employees whose job title is managing director. For example, in January 2019, Deutsche Bank promoted 63 employees in Europe and 24-36 in the United States to managing director positions.[23]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 Visvanathan, Meera (1 October 2021). "Against History: Sanjeev Sanyal's attempts to rewrite India's past". The Caravan. Retrieved 3 October 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Sanjeev Sanyal appointed full-time member of Economic Advisory Council to PM". Moneycontrol. 22 February 2022.
  3. ↑ "Sanjeev Sanyal". The Globalist. Archived from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
  4. ↑ "How I made it: Sanjeev Sanyal". India Today. 3 December 2010.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Gupta, Soumya (5 October 2015). "A contrarian looks at world affairs". Fortune India. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  6. ↑ Chakraborty, Shrim (25 February 2015). "Modi's first full year Budget". Asia House. Archived from the original on 27 February 2015.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Ghosh, Saptaparno (27 February 2022). "Sanjeev Sanyal, The man of 'economic sutras'". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 12 March 2022.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 "At sea level". The Hindu. 20 August 2016. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Pillai, Manu S (17 August 2016). "Rim of Life". Open The Magazine. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
  10. ↑ "Sanjeev Sanyal appointed as Principal Economic Adviser: All you need to know about him". DNA India. 3 February 2017. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  11. ↑ 10th Annual International G20 Conference (PDF), 11–12 October 2018, p. 10
  12. ↑ Sanjeev, Sanyal (18 August 2008). Indian Renaissance, The: India's Rise After A Thousand Years of Decline. World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-4470-76-6.
  13. ↑ Sanjeev, Sanyal (15 November 2012). Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography. Penguin Random House India Private Limited. ISBN 9788184756715.
  14. ↑ Sanyal, Sanjeev; Rajendran, Sowmya (28 November 2017). The Incredible History of India's Geography. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-932-9.
  15. ↑ Sanyal, Sanjeev (10 August 2016). The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-86057-61-7.
  16. ↑ Sanyal, Sanjeev (15 May 2018). Life over Two Beers and other stories. Penguin Random House India Private Limited. ISBN 978-93-5305-024-5.
  17. ↑ Sanyal, Sanjeev (2018). India in the Age of Ideas: Select Writings, 2006-2018. Westland. ISBN 978-93-87894-57-0.
  18. ↑ "This excerpt from a book demolishes Ashoka's reputation as pacifist". Hindustan Times. 6 August 2016.
  19. ↑ Sanyal, Sanjeev (26 January 2016). "Why India needs to no longer be an Ashokan republic, but a Chanakyan one". The Economic Times.
  20. ↑ Sanyal, Sanjeev (15 June 2015). "Our history books need rewriting". Live Mint.
  21. ↑ "Sanjeev Sanyal". Business Standard India – via Business Standard.
  22. ↑ "Author's bio: Sanjeev Sanyal". Project Syndicate. Archived from the original on 2 November 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
  23. ↑ Wajid, Darakshan (29 January 2019). "Report: Deutsche Bank names 63 managing directors in Europe". S & P Global Market Intelligence.

External links[edit]

Information red.svg
Scan the QR code to donate via UPI
Dear reader, We kindly request your support in maintaining the independence of Bharatpedia. As a non-profit organization, we rely heavily on small donations to sustain our operations and provide free access to reliable information to the world. We would greatly appreciate it if you could take a moment to consider donating to our cause, as it would greatly aid us in our mission. Your contribution would demonstrate the importance of reliable and trustworthy knowledge to you and the world. Thank you.

Please select an option below or scan the QR code to donate
₹150 ₹500 ₹1,000 ₹2,000 ₹5,000 ₹10,000 Other


Retrieved from "https://en.bharatpedia.org/index.php?title=Sanjeev_Sanyal&oldid=339079"