Biography
Born in 1936 in the small village of Jadupur in Murshidabad district in West Bengal, Bagchi received his higher education in Presidency College, Kolkata and Trinity College, University of Cambridge. In 1963 he was awarded the PhD degree at Cambridge University for a thesis titled "Private investment and partial planning in India".
He is married to the feminist critic and activist Jasodhara Bagchi.
His academic career began when he started teaching in Presidency College, Kolkata. In the 1960s, he taught in the Faculty of Economics in Cambridge (where he was Fellow of Jesus College), but resigned his post in 1969, to resume his academic career in Presidency College, Kolkata.
In 1974 he joined the newly-founded Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, which went on to become one of the most productive and globally famous research institutions in India.
Bagchi has specialised in the history of Indian banking and finance, and acted as Official Historian of the State Bank of India (SBI) from 1976 to 1998; he played a leading role in ensuring that the unique archives of SBI are preserved for posterity.
After retiring as Reserve Bank of India professor from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta in 2001, he became the founder-director of the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, a multidisciplinary centre of excellence in the social sciences, which is affiliated with the University of Calcutta, and is promoted by the government of West Bengal. Here, he spearheads research in development studies in an array of areas, notably banking and finance, public health, labour studies, information and communication studies, gender studies, education, and the sociology of literature.
He has been Visiting Professor in international academic institutions such as Cambridge University, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, Cornell University, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Naples University, and University of Bristol.
Read more about this topic: Amiya Kumar Bagchi
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