The Hindu Business Line : Galbraith's passing

Like the other doyen Peter F. Drucker, the incisive wit and persuasive logic of John Kenneth Galbraith will be cherished for long. In his case there was of course the added charm of the beauty of his prose. The one piece that I most love his description in The Great Crash 1929 dealing with the situation that arose after he gave a testimony to the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency on March 8, 1955. Some relevance to the frenzied bull run of today!

It was said of Galbraith that like the Burgundy of a fine year he got better with age. Adieu Professor and thank you for enriching our intellectual world.

M. S. Srinivasan

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This is with reference to "A giant passes away," (Business Line, May 2): The death of John Kenneth Galbraith signifies the loss of a great friend for India. So pro-India was he that John Kennedy remarked that this country had two ambassadors to the US — one in Washington DC and the other in New Delhi! His greatest contribution was in making economics understandable to the common man. His books: The Affluent Society and The Theory of Countervailing Power brought out important socio-economic problems to the attention of the ordinary men and women. Because he belonged to the old literary economic tradition without any contribution using quantitative methods, which is the current fashion in the field, he was not considered seriously for the Nobel Prize.

A. Seshan

Mumbai

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