







































Ecology, Economy, and Society–the INSEE Journal 7(1): 177-183, January 2024 

IN MEMORY 

Professor Rabindra Nath Bhattacharya (15 November 
1941 to 3 June 2022): A homage 

Achiransu Acharyya 
 
The year was 1998. In the second year of the master’s programme at the 
Department of Economics at the University of Calcutta, we had various 
courses to choose from. For the first time, a course on natural resources and 
environmental economics was on offer. As students of economics, we were 
aware of the importance of the environment, especially after the publication 
of the Brundtland Report in 1987, titled Our Common Future, which was 
written in response to the conflict between globalized economic growth and 
accelerating ecological degradation; it introduced the concept of “sustainable 
development”. We were also aware of the United Nations Conference on 
Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio 
Conference or the Earth Summit, organized by the United Nations in Rio de 
Janeiro in 1992, where the United Nations Framework Convention on 
Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established. Some of us decided to opt for 
the natural resources and environmental economics course. The course had 
two papers, one on the economics of natural resources and the other on 
environmental policy. The first paper was taught by Professor Rabindra Nath 
Bhattacharya and the second by Professor Sarmila Banerjee. At that time, 
Professor Bhattacharya was teaching at the University of Kalyani in West 
Bengal and was a visiting professor in the Department of Economics at the 
University of Calcutta. It was Professor Sarmila Banerjee who had taken the 
initiative to introduce the course on environmental economics and involve 
Professor Bhattacharya.

As an experienced teacher of the subject, Professor Bhattacharya instantly 
attracted our attention with his simple explanations. He made dynamic 
optimization and optimal control theory in the extraction of exhaustible and 

 
 Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Visva Bharati (A Central University). 
achiransu@gmail.com. 

Copyright © Acharyya 2024. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © 

NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v7i1.1235  

mailto:achiransu@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v7i1.1235


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [178] 

renewable resources seem easy. He would ensure that every student 
understood what he spoke about. His beautiful oration on the subject 
engrossed students—I was among those who fell in love with the subject and 
held the man himself in high regard. Our relationship did not end with the 
conclusion of the course though. Rather, it became more intimate at Visva 
Bharati (A Central University)—I joined as an assistant professor in the 
Department of Economics in 2004, and Professor Bhattacharya joined as the 

Amiya Kumar Dasgupta Chair Professor in the same department in 2006. 
Professor Bhattacharya offered to share the environmental economics course 
with me, which I taught at the postgraduate level. During his six-month stay 
in Santiniketan, we would walk back together from the department almost 
every day. During these long walks, he would share his life experiences of 
growing up, teaching, and research with me. I was the pupil and he the 
master. 

Professor Bhattacharya’s family moved from Faridpur in East Pakistan (now 
Bangladesh) to Kolkata when he was seven years of age, after the 
Independence of India. He was admitted to the Hindu School opposite 
Presidency College on College Street in Kolkata, where a classmate of his was 
Amit Bhaduri, another future economist, who went on to become a professor 
of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and a famous 
academician in his own right. Professor Bhattacharya vividly remembered his 
struggles as a child during those days. Living in poverty, his family had to 
share a home and toilet with other families. In those days, such an 
accommodation was called a mess bari (“shared house”). The partition of 
Bengal during Indian Independence would always haunt him. Professor 
Bhattacharya graduated in economics from Vidyasagar College, Kolkata, and 
later completed a master’s in economics at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. For 
a brief period, he taught at Vidyanagar College, which is affiliated with the 
University of Calcutta and located at South 24 Parganas. Among his 
colleagues here was Sri Pranab Mukherjee, who later became the president of 
India. Later, Professor Bhattacharya joined Dinabandhu Andrews College, 
Kolkata, as a full-time faculty member. In those days, the salary of a professor 
was one of the lowest. He once jokingly mentioned how, when meeting a 
woman for a potential marriage, he had to face questions from her father as 
to whether he would be able to take responsibility for this woman, given his 
meagre salary. In those days, parents who were arranging marriages would 

 
 It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Professor Amiya Kumar Dasgupta (16 July 1903–
14 January 1992), a famous economist, had a house in Santiniketan, which his daughter, 
Alakananda Patel, and son, famous economist, Sir Partha Dasgupta, dedicated to Visva 
Bharati. The house was renamed the AK Dasgupta Centre for Planning and Development, 
and its research works are financed by NITI Aayog. 



[179] Acharyya 

 
 

rarely allow their daughters to marry teachers due to their low salaries. 
Ultimately, he did get married. 
 
While teaching at Dinabandhu Andrews College, Professor Bhattacharya 
came in contact with Gopal Trivedi, who was teaching at Asutosh College, 
Kolkata. Professor Trivedi insisted that Professor Bhattacharya pursue a PhD 
in the US and contacted his friend Basudeb Biswas, who was then a faculty 
member at Utah State University. On the insistence of Gopal Trivedi, 
Professor Bhattacharya took leave from his college and went with his family 
to pursue a PhD at Utah State University. Although he initially wanted to do 
a PhD in finance, he eventually decided to study resource and environmental 
economics under the supervision of Professor Snyder. As a PhD scholar, 
Professor Bhattacharya won the “Outstanding Achievement Award”. His 
most-cited paper, “A More General Dynamic Economic Model of the 
Optimal Rotation of Multiple Use Forests”, was co-authored with his 
supervisor and published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and 
Management in 1990 (Snyder and Bhattacharyya 1990).  
 
On completing his PhD, Professor Bhattacharya got an offer to teach at the 
University of New Mexico in the US but, at his daughter’s insistence, he 
decided to come back to India. He re-joined his old college in Kolkata. In 
fact, he decided to settle right opposite the college and bought a flat at New 
Garia, where he stayed until his death. A lot happened in between. He left 
Dinabandhu Andrews College and shifted to North Bengal University in 
Siliguri, West Bengal. Here, perhaps for the first time in India, in 1987, he 
introduced a course on natural resources and environmental economics at 
the postgraduate level. He taught at North Bengal University for 10 years 
before shifting to another university in West Bengal, the University of 
Kalyani, in 1995, from where he finally retired in 2004. During his tenure at 
the University of Kalyani, he introduced the subject of natural resources and 
environmental economics at the postgraduate level. He was also instrumental 
in introducing the course at the postgraduate level at the University of 
Calcutta, Jadavpur University, and the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), 
Kolkata. During this time, he brought the subject to different universities and 
institutes in the country. He would often teach as a visiting faculty member 
at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), JNU, and 
various universities in the Northeast and Orissa. During this time, he also 
taught for one year at his alma mater, Utah State University.  
 
During my visits to his flat in Garia, Kolkata, he took particular pride in 
showing me a group photo with the participants of the first World Bank–



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [180] 

aided, environmental management capacity-building technical assistance 
project, which was implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Forests 
(MoEF) and executed by the Madras School of Economics (MSE), Chennai. 
Its first workshop was held in 2001, with the participation of many of the 
present academicians of environmental economics. Professor Bhattacharya 
was a resource person at this workshop and Professor Ulaganathan Sankar 
of the MSE was the coordinator. Professor Bhattacharya was also the 
resource person for the next few workshops conducted under the project, 
held mainly at the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), New Delhi. 
However, the first workshop was perhaps the most satisfying to him.  
 
The other prominent photograph on his bookshelf was of a group of 
participants in a workshop organized by the South Asian Network for 
Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) in Bangkok, in 
2002, for which also he was a resource person. Present in the photograph, 
among others, were Sir Partha Dasgupta and the late Professor Karl Goran 
Maler. He would often tell stories about how Sir Dasgupta and Professor 
Maler would tease each other and how, given his own shy, gentlemanly 
nature, he would enjoy their banter from the side. This was, in essence, 
Professor Bhattacharya—a respectable Bengali bhadralok (gentleman) who 
was always in search of new areas of study. He was inquisitive about the work 
of students and scholars, and he was a great listener. Many scholars doing 
research with other supervisors would reach out to him for suggestions. He 
was a passionate teacher who loved his students and was always ready to help 
them. Sir Dasgupta, while reminiscing about his interactions with Professor 
Bhattacharya, whom he lovingly called Rabi-da, writes, “We discussed each 
other’s lectures, and we recounted our experiences in facing the pitfalls of 
working in a deep and difficult field. We also discovered our shared love of 
teaching” (Dasgupta 2023). 
 
He supervised countless PhD scholars. Many of them are now faculty 
members at universities and research institutes. His gentle behaviour and 
almost fatherly attitude would draw students towards him. Seldom did 
anyone hear him raise his voice.  
 
Although Professor Bhattacharya did his PhD in the economics of forest 
resources, in which he also published his most-cited papers, he did not limit 
his research to that field. Later, he worked in different areas of environmental 
economics. A search of his name on Google Scholar shows the diversity of 
his research work. He has researched energy; common property resources 
such as fishery and forestry; gender and environment; mining; environmental 
standards; groundwater markets; solid waste management; mangrove 



[181] Acharyya 

 
 

conservation in the Sundarbans; wastewater treatment in the river Ganga; the 
health impact of coal mine workers; pond ecosystems; and alternative energy. 
As Professor Jeffrey R Vincent, the Korstian distinguished professor in forest 
economics and management at the Nicholas School of the Environment and 
Earth Sciences at Duke University, US, writes, “Professor Rabindra Nath 
Bhattacharya’s research in environmental economics ranges from the micro 
to the macro, from investigations of common property resource institutions 
on land and at sea to the interrelationships among economic growth, energy 
consumption, and climate change” (Acharyya 2023). 
 
Even after retiring from Kalyani University in 2004, Professor Bhattacharya 
did not stop researching or teaching. He worked as a visiting professor at the 
University of Calcutta, Jadavpur University, and IGIDR. Before his death in 
June 2022, he was also associated with the School of Oceanographic Studies 
of Jadavpur University as an honorary professor; he contributed as an 
economist to a project on the Anthropocene impact on the deltas in India 
and Bangladesh.  
 
His edited book with Oxford University Press, Environmental Economics: An 
Indian Perspective, published in 2001, is one of the most popular textbooks on 
environmental economics in the country. Presently, the book is on its 28th 
impression and is still in high demand (Bhattacharya 2001). His papers have 
been published in some of the topmost journals on environmental 
economics, such as the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 
Energy Economics, The Journal of Development Studies, Environment and Development 
Economics, Resources Policy, and Resource and Energy Economics. He has also 
contributed several articles to Economic & Political Weekly, the Indian Journal of 
Agricultural Economics, and the Indian Economic Review.  
 
Professor Bhattacharya was deeply involved with the two institutional 
networks for environmental economics in South Asia—SANDEE and the 
Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE). To both these 
institutions he contributed as a resource person. He was a member of the 
executive committee of INSEE from 2012 to 2014. As another member of 
the same executive committee, Professor Pranab Mukhopadhyay from Goa 
University writes about Professor Bhattacharya: “He would attend all the 
meetings and always had valuable suggestions on how INSEE could enhance 
its activities. He was a regular at many INSEE training workshops” 
(Mukhopadhyay 2022). 
 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [182] 

Professor Bhattacharya loved to mix and interact with people and perhaps 
this was one reason, other than academics, that he enjoyed being a part of 
INSEE and SANDEE. His love for people was also reflected in his daily 
lifestyle. He was a frequent visitor at the Coffee House near Jadavpur 
University in Kolkata. Every Sunday, he would enter promptly at 10 in the 
morning, when it opened, and stay till 1 pm, when it closed. Many professors, 
intellectuals, and scholars from different parts of the country assembled 
there, and students like me would go to listen to their discussions on 
economic and political issues. Table No. 5 was always reserved for him and 
his comrades. From the discussions that took place, I understood that he was 
more of a socialist and believed that socialism was the best path to 
governance. He believed in the role of institutions for the development of an 
economy. He would often talk about the health system of Cuba and was 
elated when Cuban doctors went to Italy to help patients during the COVID-
19 crisis (Acosta 2020). Many of these Cuban doctors had also previously 
helped patients affected by the Ebola virus in Africa. 
 
It was at this Coffee House one day in early 2019 that I expressed a wish to 
edit a book in his honour. He was extremely shy and would not allow me to 
do so. But I requested him to give me a chance and he finally agreed. I later 
approached several academicians who knew him. Almost everyone I 
contacted agreed to contribute to the volume in his honour. Sir Dasgupta 
agreed to write the foreword and Professor Vincent agreed to write an 
introduction about Professor Bhattacharya. Finally, with contributions from 
35 authors, the book took shape between 2019 and 2022.  
 
Unfortunately, in May 2022, Professor Bhattacharya fell ill and had to be 
admitted to a nursing home in Kolkata. I visited him in the hospital fairly 
often. He never spoke about his health. Even in bed, he enquired about my 
research. On 3 June 2022, I heard that Professor Bhattacharya had passed 
away in the early morning. 
 
On 10 June 2022, a condolence meeting was organized by his students at 
Jadavpur University, and many people from academia and well-wishers 
attended. It became clear how popular Professor Bhattacharya had been, not 
only in the academic world but in society at large.  
 
My edited book in his honour, Environmental Economics in Developing Countries: 
Issues and Challenges (Acharyya 2023), was published by Routledge and Taylor 
and Francis in early 2023. Unfortunately, Professor Bhattacharya did not live 
to read the book. The book is my gurudakshina (acknowledgement to a 
spiritual guide) to him. To me, he will always remain a person who, like 



[183] Acharyya 

 
 

Mahatma Gandhi, believed in simplicity and this reflected in his daily life. He 
would travel using public transport with a cloth bag on his shoulder 
(popularly known as jhola in Bengali). Liberalization of the economy and mass 
consumption could not change the Bengali bhadralok in him. He was much 
like a tree—he gave life and shelter to his students, who, I strongly believe, 
will carry his legacy forward.  
 
REFERENCES 
 
Acharyya, Achiransu (ed.). 2023. Environmental Economics in Developing Countries: Issues 
and Challenges. Oxon: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-
Economics-in-Developing-Countries-Issues-and-
Challenges/Acharyya/p/book/9781032182919.  

Acosta, Nelson. 2020. “Cuban Doctors Head to Italy to Battle Coronavirus.” Reuters, 
March 23, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cuba-
idUSKBN219051.    

Bhattacharya, Rabindra N. (ed.). 2001. Environmental Economics: An Indian Perspective. 
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.  

Brundtland, Gro Harlem. 1987. “Annexe A/42/427.” In Our Common Future: Report 
of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Geneva: Conference of NGOs. 
http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-ov.htm.   

Dasgupta, Partha. 2023. “Foreword.” In Environmental Economics in Developing 
Countries: Issues and Challenges, edited by Achiransu Acharyya, xv–xxiii. Oxon: 
Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Economics-in-
Developing-Countries-Issues-and-Challenges/Acharyya/p/book/9781032182919.  

Mukhopadhyay, Pranab. 2022. “Remembering Prof. Rabindranath Bhattacharya.” 
ICIMOD, December 16, 2022. https://www.icimod.org/article/remembering-prof-
rabindranath-bhattacharya/.  

Snyder, Donald L, and Rabindra N Bhattacharyya. 1990. “A More General Dynamic 
Economic Model of the Optimal Rotation of Multiple-use Forests.” Journal of 
Environmental Economics and Management 18 (2): 168–175. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/0095-0696(90)90046-2.  

https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Economics-in-Developing-Countries-Issues-and-Challenges/Acharyya/p/book/9781032182919
https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Economics-in-Developing-Countries-Issues-and-Challenges/Acharyya/p/book/9781032182919
https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Economics-in-Developing-Countries-Issues-and-Challenges/Acharyya/p/book/9781032182919
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cuba-idUSKBN219051
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cuba-idUSKBN219051
http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-ov.htm
https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Economics-in-Developing-Countries-Issues-and-Challenges/Acharyya/p/book/9781032182919
https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Economics-in-Developing-Countries-Issues-and-Challenges/Acharyya/p/book/9781032182919
https://www.icimod.org/article/remembering-prof-rabindranath-bhattacharya/
https://www.icimod.org/article/remembering-prof-rabindranath-bhattacharya/
https://doi.org/10.1016/0095-0696(90)90046-2

