Kakkadan Nandanath Raj, one of the key brains of the first Five Year Plan and guru for many contemporary thought-leaders in welfare economics, passed away on Wednesday. He was 86 and was ailing for some time. His final rites would be done on Thursday, sources at Centre for Development Studies (CDS) which he founded, said. He is survived by two sons, including science journalist Gopal Raj.

KN Raj was handpicked by Jawahar Lal Nehru at age of 26 to draft the introductory chapter for the country?s first Five-Year Plan. He was part of the first Planning Commission in 1950. He was in the Economic Advisory Council of Prime Ministers from Nehru to Narasimha Rao. He was also the vice-chancellor of Delhi University from 1969 to 1970.

In 1971, C Achutha Menon, then chief minister of Kerala, asked Raj to set up an academic research institution. Raj undertook the challenge and with Rs 30 lakh grant from the state government laid the foundation of CDS. He was honoured with Financial Express Award for Economics in 1995. In 2000, Raj was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in education.

He has also spawned a cadre of development thinkers and writers. Some of Raj?s well-known students at CDS are planners like Mihir Shah, journalists like Ram Manohar Reddy (editor, EPW), Sanjaya Baru (editor, Business Standard) and even politicians like Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac. ?He was a Keynesian with pragmatic moorings. He could work both at macro and micro level,? Isaac said.

In a little-known gesture, Raj is understood to have firmly declined Narasimha Rao?s invitation to join his Cabinet in early ninties. In the same vein, he refused to assume the director?s chair of the institute, which he founded.

His personal warmth refused to be mocked by old age or disease. Recently, when the cruelty of journalistic evigencies coaxed him for anecdotal material on his dear colleague, who was to take oath as Prime Minister, Raj declined comments pleading failing memory, but not before his essential sharpness flashed in rebounce, temporarily shutting out the Alzhemeirs? pangs.

?I completely recall only one point about Manmohan. He will never yield fancy anecdotal material for newspapers. He is a jolly good economist,? he said.