The Hindu Business Line : Galbraith: Scholarly and witty too

If a poll were to be taken of people who were highly scholarly and at the same time witty, Prof J. K. Galbraith would top the charts and for good reasons. He wrote incisively on a range of subjects, from economics to art and from politics to people, appealing to readers of all age groups all over the globe. The hallmark of Prof Galbraith was that he said profound things with an air of nonchalance. He attacked his peers who, in retaliation, could do nothing more than dub his lectures as "Galbraith on Galbraith". Not one to confine his writings to venerable journals, Galbraith contributed regularly to the Harvard University newspaper The Harvard Crimson.

Galbraith at his wittiest best is to be found in his book A View from the Stands (1986), a collection of his letters, newspaper articles and reviews on books and films. In early 1983, the Faculty Council of Harvard University discussed the propriety of "amorous relationships" between the officers (the teaching staff) and students and this led to Dean Henry Rosovsky writing to his colleagues, expressing the Council's disapproval of such activities. The Council felt that "Relationships between officers and students are always asymmetric in nature ... "

Galbraith, who was 74 years of age, shot off a letter to the Dean expressing his inability to act as a role model for others as his wife was his student earlier. He, of course, added that the transgression had happened 45 years back and sought the Dean's advice on the matter. Rosovsky replied that the Council, keeping in mind the "statute of limitations", would take "a humane view" of the matter and went on to offer Galbraith a Chair as `an indulgence' to celebrate his durable matrimony.

Few would be as privileged as Galbraith in having had so many friends among world statesmen, artists and writers. Fewer still would have his vast repertoire of anecdotes.

Taste this one about Nikita Khrushchev. During a visit to the US, Khrushchev was asked by a corn grower why he was keen to know the details of the techniques by which new hybrid varieties of corn were raised. Khrushchev tart reply was, "It's the Russian character. When the aristocracy first learned that potatoes were the cheapest way of feeding the peasants, no one would eat them. But whatever you say of our aristocrats, they knew their Russians. They put high fences around the potato patches, installed fierce patrol dogs, and the peasants immediately started stealing the potatoes. Soon they had developed a taste for them. You should have kept your corn a secret."

Galbraith was at his carping best when he commented on other economists. To him there were only three `greats' in economics — Adam Smith, Karl Marx and J. M. Keynes with a possible fourth in Schumpeter and a fifth in Thorstein Veblen. With Mahatma Gandhi, Prof Galbraith was all respect.

In his review of Richard Attenborough"s Gandhi, he wrote that the subject emerges as "one of the supreme forces of the century" who was `invulnerable' as he met "violence with committed non-violence, repression with carefully conditioned disobedience ... " So varied were his interests that Galbraith co-authoured a book on Basohli paintings with Dr Karan Singh. In Galbraith's passing, we have lost a true liberal and a versatile man of letters.

(The author is a former Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests.)