Pro­fes­sor Sheila Bhalla (1933-2021), Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at Jawa­har­lal Nehru Uni­ver­sity (JNU), an in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned agri­cul­tural econ­o­mist with spe­cial ex­per­tise in Haryana agri­cul­ture, and a scholar with deep en­gage­ment with pro­gres­sive and de­mo­c­ra­tic move­ments in In­dia passed away on 5th Sep­tem­ber 2021. She and her hus­band, Pro­fes­sor G. S. Bhalla, were my teach­ers at the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics, Pan­jab Uni­ver­sity, Chandi­garh (PU), and they were the kind of teach­ers with whom you keep life­long con­tact. Pro­fes­sor Bhalla passed away in 2013.   Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at Ox­ford Brookes Busi­ness School –Dr Pri­tam Singh af­fec­tion­ately and rev­er­ently re­calls the con­tri­bu­tion and im­pact of his teacher on his life and aca­d­e­mic pur­suit.

SHEILA, AS SHE WAS AF­FEC­TION­ATELY KNOWN, was Cana­dian by back­ground. She met Gur­dar­shan (G. S. Bhalla) when both were car­ry­ing out post­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics. Both were at­tracted to the so­cial­ist vi­sion of re­or­gan­is­ing economies and so­ci­eties; in Sheila’s case, she was in­flu­enced by her fa­ther J. C. W. Scott, a Cana­dian physi­cist and radar spe­cial­ist who was also a com­mit­ted com­mu­nist. This shared in­tel­lec­tual and po­lit­i­cal vi­sion led to Gur­dar­shan and Sheila get­ting mar­ried and de­cid­ing to move to In­dia.

Pro­fes­sor Bhalla came from a large fam­ily orig­i­nat­ing from the vil­lage of Badhni Kalan near Moga. To en­gage mean­ing­fully with her new Pun­jabi fam­ily, Sheila ac­quired an ex­cel­lent un­der­stand­ing of the Pun­jabi lan­guage and rea­son­able pro­fi­ciency in spo­ken Pun­jabi. For a con­sid­er­able pe­riod dur­ing their aca­d­e­mic ca­reers in Chandi­garh and Delhi, Sheila looked af­ter Pro­fes­sor Bhal­la’s el­derly mother who could only speak and un­der­stand Pun­jabi and de­vel­oped a lov­ing re­la­tion­ship with her.

The Bhal­las spent their en­tire lives com­bin­ing their su­perb aca­d­e­mic work with mul­ti­ple forms of sup­port for work­ers’ and peas­ants’ move­ments and for de­mo­c­ra­tic rights in In­dia. I have so many mem­o­ries of them but will share just one to­day. When they joined PU in 1969, I had just en­tered the sec­ond year of my un­der­grad­u­ate stud­ies. On 2nd Sep­tem­ber 1969, the Viet­namese leader Ho Chi Minh passed away and some of us or­gan­ised a meet­ing in the uni­ver­sity to pay homage to his rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­er­ship. Many stu­dents turned up but only two fac­ulty mem­bers from the whole uni­ver­sity joined the meet­ing, and they were the Bhal­las. It was a great boost to our morale and the be­gin­ning of a life­long re­la­tion­ship.

The man­age­ment of PU was, for a very long time, con­trolled by pro-Arya Samaj right-wing groups sup­ported by the Con­gress Party and the Jan Sangh, and later by the Bharatiya Janata Party. To­gether with her hus­band, Sheila Bhalla played an un­der­stated but crit­i­cal strate­gic role in chal­leng­ing the dom­i­nance of these par­ties.

The man­age­ment of PU was, for a very long time, con­trolled by pro-Arya Samaj right-wing groups sup­ported by the Con­gress Party and the Jan Sangh, and later by the Bharatiya Janata Party. To­gether with her hus­band, Sheila Bhalla played an un­der­stated but crit­i­cal strate­gic role in chal­leng­ing the dom­i­nance of these par­ties. They were as­sisted in this by their friends Pro­fes­sor Dharam Vir of the Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment (a man of re­mark­able in­tel­lect and moral stature who was a life-long friend of the Bhal­las and died al­most within a month of Pro­fes­sor Bhal­la’s death) and Gur­baksh Singh Soch of the Eng­lish de­part­ment (who died young, about 30 years ago). They de­vel­oped the Pan­jab Uni­ver­sity Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PUTA) from an or­gan­i­sa­tion of vir­tu­ally no im­por­tance to one that had crit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance to the gov­er­nance of PU. 

When Pro­fes­sor Bhalla suc­cess­fully chal­lenged a heavy-weight pro-Con­gress fac­ulty mem­ber (Pro­fes­sor V. N. Ti­wari) for the of­fice of pres­i­dent of PUTA, Sheila played a key role in or­gan­is­ing and strate­gis­ing their group’s elec­tion cam­paign. Many left-wing teach­ers such as D. N. Jauhar, Man­jit Singh and Ronki Ram (not to men­tion my­self) later be­came pres­i­dents of PUTA, but the in­flu­ence of left-wing ide­ol­ogy on the or­gan­i­sa­tion was first cre­ated by the Bhal­las and Pro­fes­sor Vir. When­ever the his­tory of PUTA is writ­ten, their names will fea­ture as guid­ing stars.

I was moved by the care and in­ter­est in my wel­fare and aca­d­e­mic progress ex­pressed by the Bhal­las.

I was moved by the care and in­ter­est in my wel­fare and aca­d­e­mic progress ex­pressed by the Bhal­las, as well as by Pro­fes­sor S. B. Rangnekar, the head of the de­part­ment when they arranged for me to meet Pro­fes­sor Kr­ishna Bharad­waj dur­ing her 1971 visit to de­liver a se­ries of lec­tures at PU. That meet­ing even­tu­ally led to my move to JNU in 1972 to study for my M.Phil. un­der Pro­fes­sor Bharad­wa­j’s su­per­vi­sion. A few years af­ter my move to JNU, the Bhal­las also moved there to join the fac­ulty. While at JNU, Sheila gave me a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion to help me ap­ply for fur­ther re­search and aca­d­e­mic po­si­tions. Her words were such recog­ni­tion of my worth as a per­son and as her stu­dent that I have kept the let­ter as a prized pos­ses­sion. I kept in touch with them even af­ter mov­ing to Ox­ford.

Dur­ing their time at PU, the most im­por­tant op­por­tu­nity and break­through in the Bhal­las’ re­search came with the award of a sub­stan­tial re­search pro­ject grant by the Haryana gov­ern­ment to study the de­vel­op­ment of the Green Rev­o­lu­tion in the state. Their first ma­jor pub­li­ca­tion, Chang­ing Agrar­ian Struc­ture in In­dia: A Study of the Im­pact of Green Rev­o­lu­tion in Haryana (1974), re­sulted from this pro­ject. One im­por­tant find­ing of the study was the in­verse re­la­tion­ship be­tween farm size and pro­duc­tiv­ity, i.e., when the farm size in­creases, farm out­put per acre de­creases. The study’s find­ing that small farm­ers are more pro­duc­tive res­onates to­day with the farm­ers’ move­ment in In­dia, which aims to de­fend small and mar­ginal farm­ers against the on­slaught of big agro-busi­ness firms.

An im­por­tant find­ing of their first ma­jor pub­li­ca­tion, Chang­ing Agrar­ian Struc­ture in In­dia: A Study of the Im­pact of Green Rev­o­lu­tion in Haryana (1974) was the in­verse re­la­tion­ship be­tween farm size and pro­duc­tiv­ity.

Sub­se­quently and es­pe­cially af­ter their move to JNU, a di­vi­sion of in­tel­lec­tual labour seemed to de­velop be­tween them; Sheila spe­cialised in Haryana and other re­gions of In­dia such as Andhra Pradesh, and G. S. Bhalla spe­cialised in Pun­jab and Gu­jarat among other re­gions. Sheila pi­o­neered the study of agrar­ian re­la­tions in Haryana and pub­lished out­stand­ing pa­pers on the sub­ject.

The trib­ute paid to Pro­fes­sor Sheila Bhalla by the All In­dia Kisan Sabha (AIKS) recog­nises the con­ver­gence be­tween her in­tel­lec­tual and po­lit­i­cal work:

“AIKS ex­presses deep grief at the pass­ing away of Pro­fes­sor Sheila Bhalla, a life-long fighter for the cause of peas­ants and work­ers. Her vast ar­ray of work helps us to un­der­stand the im­pact of cap­i­tal­ist de­vel­op­ment on In­dian agri­cul­ture, the plight of the poor, agri­cul­tural labour­ers, ten­ant farm­ers and other peas­ant groups. An agri­cul­tural econ­o­mist of great renown, af­ter her re­tire­ment she con­tin­ued to live an ac­tive life ded­i­cated to study­ing the chang­ing face of agri­cul­ture and the im­pact of ne­olib­eral eco­nomic poli­cies.

Her vast ar­ray of work helps us to un­der­stand the im­pact of cap­i­tal­ist de­vel­op­ment on In­dian agri­cul­ture, the plight of the poor, agri­cul­tural labour­ers, ten­ant farm­ers and other peas­ant groups.

All In­dia Kisan Sabha

She was well ac­quainted with the AIKS, at­tend­ing not only Sem­i­nars or Con­fer­ences but also protests, even at her ad­vanced age. She last at­tended the 33rd All In­dia Con­fer­ence of the AIKS at Cud­dalore in 2013. She was a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor to the AIKS Cen­tre, en­gag­ing in long con­sul­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions on her stud­ies of rural In­dia and their find­ings. She also went through AIKS doc­u­ments metic­u­lously, sug­gest­ing cor­rec­tions and changes. She took a stead­fast po­si­tion on the as­sault on ed­u­ca­tion and the re­cent at­tacks of the BJP-RSS on JNU, its stu­dents and teach­ers. She has been a much-loved teacher and in­spired gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents”.

Pro­fes­sor Sheila Bhalla is sur­vived by her daugh­ter Gur­sha­ran Ras­togi, as well as by her sons Upin­der Singh Bhalla and Ravin­der Singh Bhalla (all three hav­ing achieved doc­tor­ates in their re­spec­tive fields in In­dia), and Yo­gin­der Singh Bhalla (liv­ing in Canada), to­gether with eight grand­chil­dren some of whom have gone for higher stud­ies to the coun­try of their grand­moth­er’s birth.

Dr Pri­tam Singh has a DPhil from the Uni­ver­sity of Ox­ford and is Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at Ox­ford Brookes Busi­ness School. He is the au­thor of ‘Fed­er­al­ism, Na­tion­al­ism and De­vel­op­ment: In­dia and the Pun­jab Econ­omy.’  In June 2015, he was awarded the Dis­tin­guished Achieve­ment Award in Po­lit­i­cal Econ­omy For The Twenty-First Cen­tury by the World As­so­ci­a­tion of Po­lit­i­cal Econ­omy at its Tenth Fo­rum held at Jo­han­nes­burg, South Africa, and in May 2021, the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia (River­side) ho­n­oured him with a ‘Life­time Achieve­ment Award for his dis­tin­guished con­tri­bu­tion to the Pun­jab Re­search Group in the UK to pro­mote Sikh and Pun­jab Stud­ies.’

Post Scrip­tum: An ear­lier it­er­a­tion of this re­mem­brance note has been pub­lished in The In­dian Ex­press.