V.K.R.V. was born into a poor Madhwa Brahmin family in Kanjeevaram. He was the only child in the family who got a cup of milk; they couldn’t afford it for the rest. His father was an astrologer with uncertain income. But the young V.K.R.V. didn’t have an unhappy childhood, though he was rebellious and disobedient. These were to be his defining traits.
Rao completed his Master’s in 1929 from Bombay University and went to Cambridge on a scholarship to undertake his economics tripos where he stood first. He was in the first group of PhDs in economics Cambridge University produced. Rao caught the attention of John Maynard Keynes and became a member of his famous Political Economy Club. Then on, he was convinced that intelligent state intervention was key to solving India’s problems of poverty and underdevelopment.
Rao’s PhD was the pioneering exercise of estimating India’s national income, and is a classic in the field. His contemporaries often found him difficult to deal with, but he possessed charisma. He was passionately committed to bringing about rapid economic development in India, and believed setting up institutions of higher learning in the social sciences was a prerequisite. The life and times of this great institution builder have been painstakingly edited by his nephew, S.L. Rao.
