Chintaman Dwarakanath Deshmukh was the
first Indian Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. He later became the Union
Finance Minister. In recognition of his meritorious services to the Reserve Bank
and the nation and in order to perpetuate his memory, the Reserve Bank of India
has instituted an annual lecture series entitled 'Chintaman Deshmukh Memorial
Lectures'.
Chintaman Deshmukh was born on January
14, 1896 at Nata, near Fort Raigarh, in Maharashtra, in a land-holding family
with a tradition of public service. Chintaman's father, Dwarakanath Ganesh
Deshmukh, was a respected lawyer and his mother, Bhagirathibai was a deeply
religious lady.
Chintaman Deshmukh had an outstanding
educational career. He stood first in the Matriculation examination of the
University of Bombay in 1912, and also secured the first Jagannath Sankersett
Scholarship in Sanskrit. At the University of Cambridge in 1917, he graduated in
the field of Natural Sciences Tripos with Botany, Chemistry and Geology, winning
the Frank Smart Prize in Botany. He appeared for the Indian Civil Service
Examination, then held only in London, in 1918, and topped the list of
successful candidates.
For most of his 21 years with the
Indian Civil Service, Chintaman Deshmukh was with the then Central Provinces and
Berar Government where, among other things, he was probably the youngest among
those who held the positions of Revenue Secretary and Finance Secretary. While
on leave in London, he worked as one of the secretaries to the Second Round
Table Conference in which Mahatma Gandhi participated. The memorandum submitted
by the Central Provinces and Berar Government, which Deshmukh prepared, for the
purpose of the enquiry by Sir Otto Niemeyer leading to the award on the
financial relations between the Centre and the Provinces under the Government of
India Act, 1935, won him high acclaim.
Chintaman Deshmukh's association with
the Reserve Bank of India began in July 1939, when he was appointed Liaison
Officer in the Bank to keep the Government of India in touch with the Bank's
affairs. Three months later, he was appointed Secretary of the Central Board of
the Bank and two years later in December 1941, as the Deputy Governor. He was
Governor from August 11, 1943 to June 30, 1949.
Chintaman Deshmukh proved to be an
outstanding Governor. He presided over the transformation of the Reserve Bank
from a private shareholders' bank to a nationalised institution and secured the
enactment of a comprehensive legislation for the regulation of banking companies
and the establishment of the first financial institution for the provision of
long-term credit to industry, namely, the Industrial Finance Corporation of
India (IFCI). He also initiated a number of steps for building up an adequate
machinery for rural credit. Commenting on Chintaman Deshmukh's role in regard to
the provision of rural credit, a leading co-operator wrote that he "brought
about a complete change in the approach from one of hesitant conservatism or
laissez-fare to that of a progressive outlook and adoption of positive steps to
built up an institutional machinery to provide agricultural credit and for
channelling Reserve Bank funds for development of agriculture".
Chintaman Deshmukh played an important
role in the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, which lead to the
establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). In both of these institutions,
Chintaman Deshmukh was a Member of the Board of Governors for ten years and was
the Chairman at the Joint Annual Meeting of these two institutions held in Paris
in 1950.
In September 1949, the then Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed Chintaman Deshmukh as India's Special
Financial Ambassador to America and Europe, in which capacity he conducted the
preliminary negotiations for a wheat loan from the USA. Towards the end of the
year, Jawaharlal Nehru asked Chintaman Deshmukh to work on the organisation of
the Planning Commission and appointed him member of it when it was set up on
April 1, 1950. Shortly thereafter, Chintaman Deshmukh joined the Union Cabinet
as the Finance Minister and held that office with distinction till he resigned
in July 1956. His stewardship of the country's finances was marked by prudence
as well as a humane perspective and vision in dealing imaginatively with the
changing financial needs of a developing country. Financial policy was directed
towards facilitating the achievement of rapid growth, social justice and
economic stability. He made significant contributions to the formulation and
implementation of the country's First and Second Five Year Plans. He was also
primarily responsible for such important landmarks in the area of social control
of the financial structure such as the enactment of a new Companies Act, and
nationalisation of the Imperial Bank of India and life insurance
companies.
A different phase of public service by
Chintaman Deshmukh in the realms of education and social service was noticed
since his Chairmanship of the University Grants Commission from 1956 to 1960,
helping to lay a solid foundation for the improvement of the standards of
University education in the country. He was Vice-Chancellor the University of
Delhi from March 1962 to February 1967, building it up as an outstanding
institution for higher learning.
Chintaman Deshmukh also gave generously
of his time and energies to the building up of other important institutions
devoted to the cause of education and research. He was President of the Indian
Statistical Institute (ISI) from 1945 to 1964. It was during the period when he
was both the President of the ISI and the Union Finance Minister that the
National Sample Survey, to be conducted by the ISI, was instituted (1951-52),
and the Central Statistics Office was established. He was President of the
Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi, from 1965 to 1974. He served as the
Honorary Chairman of the National Book Trust from 1957 to 1960. He founded the
India International Centre in 1959, for which he was the Life President. He
headed the Board of Governors of the Administrative Staff College of India,
Hyderabad, from 1959 to 1973 and was also the Chairman of the Indian Institute
of Public Administration, New Delhi, in 1963-64. Other bodies with which
Chintaman Deshmukh was associated included the Indian Council of World Affairs
(1960-67) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (1965-70).
Alongwith his wife Durgabai, Chintaman Deshmukh participated in multifaceted
social service work, especially in the functional literacy and family planning
work undertaken by the Andhra Mahila Sabha, Madras and Hyderabad, a social
organisation of which Smt. Durgabai was the Founder President. He became its
President after Smt. Durgabai's death.
Chintaman Deshmukh's old college at
Cambridge, Jesus College, elected him an Honorary Fellow in 1952 in recognition
of his distinguished contribution in the areas of Indian and international
finance and administration. He was co-recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay
Foundation's Award for distinguished Government Service in 1959. A number of
prestigious universities and institutions, international as well as Indian,
conferred on him doctorates honoris causa; these included the Universities of
Princeton (USA), Leicester (UK), Pune, Delhi, Allahabad, Nagpur and Osmania
(India), as also the Indian Statistical Institute.
Chintaman Deshmukh had a great love for
gardening and horticulture was his special hobby. His love for Sanskrit is well
known and he published a volume of his poems in Sanskrit in 1969. He was also
proficient in a number of foreign languages.
Chintaman Deshmukh died in his 87th
year at Hyderabad on October 2, 1982. With his rare combination of qualities of
idealism and objectivity, culture and science, integrity, dedication and
imagination, Chintaman Deshmukh always ranks high among the eminent sons of
India.
So far, eleven Chintaman Deshmukh
Memorial Lectures have been delivered as mentioned below.