With deep regret I record the death
of C.V. Nair, former Executive Director of the Reserve Bank of India, at
Thiruvananthapuram. He was 87
The brief note which has appeared on
the obituary pages of Malayalam newspapers today does not do justice to his life
and work.
C. Vijayan Nair was a young Lecturer in the
Economics department of Mahatma Gandhi College, Thiruvananthapuram, when I joined there as a Final
Year B. Sc Mathematics student after completing the First Year at the tempestuous
campus of the Sree Narayana College, Kollam. Since I didn’t study Economics, I was not his
student. But I had occasion to develop a long and abiding friendship with him.
He was among the small band of teachers who used to gather at the
Statue Junction almost every evening, after classes. Along with a couple of
other students I used to join them.
Students
organized a Mock Assembly in the college. The Treasury Benches
and Opposition Benches were occupied by students but we picked C. Vijayan Nair for
the Speaker’s chair. The Mock Assembly was a roaring success and there
was demand for a Mock Parliament. This
time we got M. Prabha, a rising Advocate, to act as Speaker and two teachers, Vijayan Nair and Lawrence Lopez, led the
ruling party and the opposition.
C.V. Nair had to leave the job as the
management disapproved of his action in organizing the first Private College
Teachers Association. He found a berth at the Cooperative College but that also
did not last long, and he moved out of Kerala.
He worked for a while at an
Institute of Economics in Hyderabad. When I visited him there, he told me
that though he did not have a doctorate he was a guide to Ph.D. students there.
Later he joined the Reserve Bank of
India as Rural Credit Officer and rose to be one of its Executive Directors. He was an expert on rural credit and the cooperative movement. He was active
in the Reserve Bank Officers Association, too. He represented it in the negotiations
with the management.
The RBI lent his services to the
government at one stage to help set up the Rural Electrification Corporation in
New Delhi. He served as its first Secretary.
Babu Vijayanath, son of Desabhimani
T.K. Madhavan, who was instrumental in drawing Gandhi’s attention to
caste-based discrimination in Travancore, has written in his memoirs about a
night trip he undertook to Chidambaram railway station while studying at
Annamalai University. Gandhi was travelling by a train which was to pass through the station and he wanted to
meet him. C.V. Nair, who was also a student there at the time, was with him,
he says.
On retirement from the RBI, Vijayan Nair returned to Thiruvananthapuram and led a quiet life.
1 comment:
BRP sar, Thank you for sharing this information. I had the fortune to meet C.V.Nair, a close friend of my uncle K.M.Bashir who worked in the ILO office, Geneva. Sad that the obituary did not touch Sri.Nair's valuable contributions to the society: A. Suhair
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