N Krishnaji (1935–2019)

Nidadavolu Krishnaji (22 February 1935–6 November 2019) was a rare Indian academic for whom the pursuit of knowledge was important solely to help understand the world around us, and to share this knowledge with his students and colleagues.

Krishnaji was trained in statistics. But, his research work in some of the leading social science institutions in the country went far beyond this field. His consistently high-quality work over half a century went from pure statistics to India’s agrarian structure, from fertility behaviour to crimes against women, and from food prices to the sex ratio.¹