If Indradeep Sinha had heeded the advice of his academic mentor Professor Gyan Chand, the then doyen of Economics at Patna University who later became the adviser of Prime Minister Nehru, to take up an academic career, possibly the best of word's scholarships would have been at his bedside at the time of his sad demise.

Prof Gyan Chand had influenced generations of students in leftward politics in Patna University. Indradeep Sinha's sterling result in post-graduation in Economics and razor sharp intellect had therefore inspired Gyan Chand to advice him to take up a formal career in Economics. But even at that young age, Indradeep Sinha had already set his ideological goals firmly and opted for a hard alternative rather than a soft professional career where he could have scripted a new history of scholarship in Economics. Further, even in politics, if he had avoided leftward journey, he could have adorned the scholarly cabinet of Nehru in place of Tarkeshwari Sinha or Shyamnandan Mishra. If he had compromised a little on his radicalism and stayed on in the Congress Socialist Party with Jay Prakash Narain, his political graph would have taken a different trajectory. Opting for the communist ideology, that too in forties, may not have been a kiss of political and professional death, but certainly it was not a bed of roses. In spite of being groomed in the best culture of traditional elite, he advocated for the causes of have-nots. But his concern for the marginal and his involvement with the grassroot agitation did not lead him to vulgar empiricism. In all his scholarship and activism, a deep theoretical strand run through him, a rare breed in today's world. His academic foundation helped him in engaging intellectually with the best of minds of his time who shaped national, peasant, socialist and communist movements. Neither Sahajanand Saraswati nor Jay Prakash Narain was spared by Indradeep Sinha and allowed to go scot free in any polemical debate. While this helped Sahajanand to stop ideological vacillation on the other hand, Jay Prakash Narain went for political hibernation after the electoral rout of his party in 1952 General Elections. It was rumored at that time that Jay Prakash's consistent anti-communism and initial political renunciation was attributable to the desertion of two of his trusted protegies - Indradeep Sinha and Ali Ashraf (who incidentally died a few weeks ago) from his rank to CPI. Indradeep Sinha had later rightly anticipated the political shape of things. During seventies, therefore, against the popular trend, he tried to stem the alternative ideological stride of abandonment of the state and class-free ideology of politics. If Bihar had heeded his and his parties advice at that time, the politics of the country would have been entirely different.

Indradeep Sinha had not only made outstanding contributions as a parliamentarian in Bihar Legislative Council and Rajya Sabha, but also had moments of glory as an administrator. His brief tenure as a Revenue Minister in UF Government along with Karpoori Thakur, Ramanand Tiwary, Chandrasekhar Singh and Kapildeo Singh can be considered a copy book example of 'good governance'. Not only he created a niche for himself in the realm of administration and probity, but also showed to the world how instruments of state could be used in favour of the toiling masses rather than fettering them. The UF Government first led the foundation of Green Revolution in Bihar, and later created the democratic base for the social justice movement to succeed in future. If Srikrishna Sinha and K. B. Sahay had unsettled the permanent settlement of Lord Cornwalis of 1793, Indradeep Sinha further advanced and fine-tuned the tenurial reform in the state, whether on the question of homestead land for the landless or for the rights of the sharecroppers. He not only knew the meticulous details about the tenurial system, but he also had the deep theoretical understanding about he various evils of the society and the economy. He used to be so serious about his works that, even while delivering a talk on 'Land Reforms' in an innocuous college of rural Bihar, he would come prepared to the hilt as if he were addressing a gathering at an international conference. Indradeep Sinha had certain limitations, but they were perhaps societal, not individual. Remember that in the Ryotwari areas, the leaders, opinion makers or intellectuals have often engaged themselves with the operational aspects of development. In those areas, political leaders like Kamraj or social reformer like Sahuji Maharaj or economist like Gadgil encouraged entrepreneurship and capitalist transformation in agriculture. Even the communist and peasant movement in Andhra Pradesh had later transcended beyond tenurial questions. The massive generation of surplus in agriculture in Ryotwari area laid the foundation for industrial accumulation. In permanent settled areas, however, it would be considered a blasphemy for the intellectuals and left political activists to work out the nuts and bolts of development. In the backdrop of absence of Gandhian catholicism, the responsibility of capitalist accumulation in Bihar could have been taken by the communists. And who could have been a better intellectual architect for this fusion other than Indradeep Sinha? Here the tenurial question, unfortunately, remained the only political engagement. The vast segment who got themselves liberated from the tenurial oppression had no planned agenda of primitive accumulation. Normally the incentive structure in the society is scripted by either the social reformer or political opinion makers. Accumulation in a society will take place in any case, if it has to survive. But the nature of accumulation, whether buccaneering or legitimate, is decided by the incentive structure. The foundation of the incentive structure in turn in depended on who exercises the intellectual, moral and societal legitimacy. Indradeep Sinha combined all these elements to tower over all his contemporaries.