[TRIBUTE: I happened to meet Late Padma Vibhushan Shri Tarlok Singh in the mid-nineties when I was elected as a Member of the Executive Council of the Indian Association of Social Science Institutions. I cherish and treasure those ten years I received his affection in various ways, including his comments on my articles and books. I was however acquainted much before with the scholarly works of this member of the Indian Civil Service, which position he never mentioned after his name. Later I learnt from others about the place he enjoyed in the planning community. I never found him autobiographical in long sittings with him, which we all tend to become as we grow in age. An economist by training (in the LSE) and a planner by practice, he was not a narrow technician. One of the pioneers to study poverty (1940s), he wanted to see Indian society free of poverty on the one hand and free of parochial prejudices on the other and he thought this was possible through a reorganization of the rural economic order on ‘cooperative lines’. By contributing an article on a theme close to his heart, though definitely not of a genre he would have crafted, I offer my humble tribute to the one who was much above the positions he happened to occupy.]
