66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST in the sphere of public finance. He did make significant forays outside public finance, the most notable example being his extremely interesting article in 1963-64 on the food problem in India, in Economic Weekly^ where he drew attention to the stagnation that had occurred in foodgrain yields and argued the case for rationing, an argument that was resoundingly vindicated by the acute food crisis of the mid-1960s but public finance remained his forte. The three major works which he authored fall within this domain : his doctoral dissertation on .public expenditure trends in colonial India, his massive book on Financial Administration in India, and the Report of the Kerala Taxation Enquiry Committee, of which Thavaraj was the chairtnan. Each of these books would continue to remain relevant for students of public finance for a long time to come. Thavaraj's doctoral dissertation, apart from building up useful time series on public expenditure, was notable for emphasizing the fact that public expenditure in colonial India reinforced, rather than counteracted^ cyclical movements in economic activity. Under the general sway of the principle of "sound finance", public expenditure was more or less tied to public revenue, whose magnitude, in turn, was determined by the level of economic activity. Since the economy was virtually an open one, for much of the period the level of activity in the economy was strongly influenced by impulses orginating for the metropolitan centres of the capitalist world. Colonial public finance thus not only contributed to the underdevelopment of the economy but magnified its vulnerability to external shocks, a fact strikingly illustrated by the developments of the inter-war period. This point of course has been recognized by many, but Thavaraj's work concretely demonstrated it. His subsequent writings on public finance, including the many articles in Social Scientist dealing with the post-independence period, were concerned with two main themes : the systemic nature of the fiscal crisis engulfing the Indian state in recent years and the evolution of the Centre S^tate financial relations. For this latter theme, which has been much debated lately, the relevant chapter in Thavaraj's book on Financial Administration provides an extremely useful introduction. He was a simple and warm person, direct, straightforward and capable of great generosity. He was blunt and spoke out what he felt; sometimes it hurt but one knew that the man was not holding back anything, was not indulging in any duplicity of behaviour, any slyness. And above all, Thavaraj was a courageous person. His courage of conviction withstood such difficult times as the India-China conflict, and the period of creeping, and subsequently open. Emergency, when radical intellectuals having links with the communist movement were subject to considerable harassment. When the second united front government in West Bengal was dismissed, and a signature campaign among intellectuals was sought to be started in Delhi, it was found that in this great metropolis not more than a tiny handful, to be counted literally on one's finger tips, was-prepared to affix its signature to a statement denouncing the dismissal.