Their main criticism of the Second Five Year Plan (1957-62) that laid
the foundations of Indian economic policy was that it neglected mass
consumer goods like food and clothing and laid far too great an emphasis
on heavy industry-oriented import substitution. India could not enjoy
the fruits of efficient labour-intensive industrialisation of the East
Asian type largely because of the choices made in the Second Plan and
carried forward subsequently. Actually, instead of neglect, what the
Second Plan did was to consign the production of mass consumer goods
to village, cottage and small-scale industry. This was done to appease
the Gandhians led by the then-Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission
Gulzarilal Nanda. Among the first to write about a 7-8% rate of growth,
Brahmananda was also the first economist to point out that the Second
Plan was neglecting the foreign trade sector. Thereafter, Manmohan Singh
and Jagdish Bhagwati were to further elaborate on this theme of the
anti-export bias in our economic policy.

In the grand traditions of the great Indian gurus of yore, Brahmananda
was an inspirational teacher and mentor. He trained a very large number
of men and women in the University of Bombay who went on to have distinguished
careers of their own. Keeping himself aloof from any governmental links,
he was a fiercely independent scholar, monumentally prolific till the
very end in publishing books, technical papers and popular articles.
His advice was always sought, even if it was rarely followed. Twice
he hit the headlines: once in 1962 when his influential study on poverty
was hotly debated in Parliament and again in February 1974 when he mobilized
140 economists to prepare a blueprint for combating inflation that was
then raging at over 20%. This blueprint, known colourfully as “Semibombla”
(Scheme for Money Immobilisation through Bond Medallions and Blocked
Assets), did serve as an input into the Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s tough and
effective anti-inflation package devised by Dr. Manmohan Singh that
was announced in July 1974. Although Brahmananda’s prodigious output
presaged much of the reforms of the 1990s, the full potential of vital,
employment and export- intensive industries like textiles and other
consumer goods has yet to be unleashed, particularly because of reservations
for the small-scale sectors, restrictive labour laws and the nature
of fiscal levies.

Brahmananda’s intellectual canvas was unusually wide -monetary policy,
development economics, economic theory, macroeconomics, to name just
a few. His lifestyle was Gandhian. He rebuffed many offers to teach
overseas but drew great satisfaction when international giants like
Pierro Sraffa, Jacob Viner and Theodore Schultz warmly acknowledged
his contributions as being world-class. He was also very large-hearted
towards those who disagreed with him and inspite of the attacks that
were mounted on him by the “leftist” establishment right through the
1960s and 1970s, he retained his unbounded admiration for both Jawaharlal
Nehru and Mahalanobis, believing that they were non-ideological visionaries.
In this he echoed P.N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi’s economic adviser who once
wrote that Nehruvites have completely ossified Nehru–just as, it might
be added, Gandhians have frozen Gandhi in time.