By
Satyaki Paul
The date June 29, 2021 marks the National Statistics Day which was put forward by our Hon’ble former PM Manmohan Singh to commemorate the birth anniversary of the Father of Indian Statistics Professor Prashant Chandra Mahalanobis (1893-1972).
He was born on 29th June 1893 at 210 Cornwallis Street (his grandfather’s house) as the elder son among two sons and four daughters of Probodh Chandra Mahalanobis and Nirodbasini Devi. He was born into a family well established in Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta), who were fairly wealthy and whose members were enterprising, adventurous, imbued with emerging Brahmo Samaj traditions, and active in all Bengali life.
In his first days, he studied in the Brahmo Boys School and then later he went to Presidency College to study Physics. He was mentored by Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose and Shri Prafulla Chandra Ray in Presidency college.He graduated in 1912. During his course of study, a group consisting of people with interest in statistics was formed in Presidency College. The group consisted of members such asPramatha Nath Banerji, Nikhil Ranjan Sen and Sir R.N. Mukherji. Later, Sir R.N. Mukherjee andP.C. Mahalanobisplayed a fundamental role in establishing the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in 1932. The institute was declared as an institute of national importance in 1959. Furthermore, in 1933, they started the journal under the name “Sankhya”.
As of convention, professors of all colleges in West Bengal are denoted with acronym. In this vein, Prof. Mahalanobis, was popularly called PCM by his colleagues, friends and students.He was one of the main members of the first Planning Commission of India (now NITI Aayog). In his capacity at the commission, Mahalanobis can easily be called a pioneer who brought the concept of planned governance to India.He took major charge in drafting the Second Five Year Plan for India. He believed in perspective planning and used simple logical ideas in deriving an economic model for planning in a under developed country such as India.
The most significant contribution of Professor Mahalanobis was the “Mahalanobis distance”. This formula is mainly used in the field of cluster analysis and classification.He also established the National Sample Survey (NSO) in 1950; forproviding comprehensive socio-economic statistics. He had also set up the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) to organize statistical activities in the country. His other contributions to statistics comprise of the concept of pilot surveys and for designing large-scale sample surveys.
He died on 28th June 1972, just a day before his 69thbirthday.Nonetheless, his life was full of exploring newer possibilities in the field of science. Its effect can be seen in the modern-day ISI. Apart from being a professor and a bureaucrat, he also served as a secretary to Rabindranath Tagore and was also associated with Visva-Bharati University. In due course, he received numerous accolades such as the Padma Vibhushan (1968), Weldon Memorial Prize from the University of Oxford (1944); and Fellow of the Royal Society, London (1945).
The author works as a Ph.D. Research Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, and the co-author of the book Anthropology For All (2021).