Daniel Thorner

Daniel Thorner (1915–1974) was an American-born economist known for his work on agricultural economics and Indian economic history. He is known for the application of historical and contemporary economic analysis on policy and influenced agricultural policy in India in the 1950s through his association with the Planning Commission. Along with D. D. Kosambi and R. S. Sharma, he brought peasants into the study of Indian history for the first time.

Early life He started his graduate studies at Columbia University in the 1930s, before moving to India at the end of World War II. He completed his thesis on the conditions of the British railway and steam ship enterprise in India in 1950, later published as a book. published in 1956, was based on his direct observations and interactions with villagers in several parts of India. His two subsequent books were published after he left India and were Agricultural cooperatives in India, a collection of papers on agriculture and economic history and Land and Labour in India. Both were analytical works, examining the impact of policy on Indian farmers and boldly questioned existing statistics, reports and data, where they were poor or unreliable. He concluded from the data that de-industrialization in India was very modest in the twentieth century, and any de-industrialization had occurred in the late nineteenth century, contrary to prevailing belief.

Later life Due to desire to return to a university and partially due to economic reasons, he left India in 1962 after spending ten years, to take up an academic position at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He edited the works of Harold H. Mann, an economist, and Alexander Chayanov. He was instrumental in introducing Chayanov's work to the English-speaking scholars. He continued to visit South Asia often and helped with the escape from persecution of some intellectuals from Dhaka during the Bangladesh Liberation War After a brief period of illness, he died in 1974.