The Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE), commonly known as Gokhale Institute, is one of the oldest research and training institutes in Economics in India. It is located on BMCC Road in the Deccan Gymkhana area of Pune, Maharashtra – the city often termed as the Oxford of the East.
The Institute was founded on June 6, 1930 by late Shri R R Kale as a centre for research and higher learning in economics. The Institute was founded with an endowment offered to the Servants of India Society by Shri R R Kale. The Servants of India Society, a registered body founded by the nationalist leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), are the trustees of the Institute. The Institute is registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950.
The Institute was set up with an objective to conduct research on the economic and political problems of India and to train research workers in these disciplines. Professor Dhananjaya Rao Gadgil, a renowned scholar and visionary, was the first Director of the Institute. Under his leadership, the institution laid the foundation for research, teaching and training in different branches of economics. From those days it has evolved into a premiere institute for advanced study in economics boasting of faculty and alumni who have distinguished themselves nationally and internationally as academicians, policy makers and consultants.
The major research areas of the Institute, developed over the years through financial assistance from various sources, are: Agricultural Economics, Population Studies, Economic History, Input-output analysis for planning and development, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Monetary economics, Financial Economics, Public Economics, International Economics and the study of economics of East European countries.
In the early years, the research activities were financed through assistance from various ministries and public funding agencies including the Government of Maharashtra and private foundations like the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. In 1954, the Union Ministry of Food and Agriculture established the Agro-Economic Research Centre of the Institute. During the early fifties, the Rockefeller Foundation made a substantial grant, spread over years, for the conduct of a research programme in rural demography. The Union Ministry of Health also gave grants for conducting some specific demographic studies in 1954-57; and in 1964, the Ministry decided to strengthen and expand the research work on population by financing on a continuing basis a Population Research Centre as an integral part of the Institute. Ford Foundation gave a very generous financial assistance for more than a decade beginning with the year 1956. Later on, the Ford Foundation, in co-operation with the Planning Commission, provided a separate grant for research and training in the areas of planning and development, mainly devoted to input-output studies. In 1962, the University Grants Commission recognised the Institute as a Centre of Advanced Study in Agricultural Economics to start with and later, in 1964, as a Centre of Advanced Study in Economics. In 1977, the UGC, as a part of its Area Studies Programme, established at the Institute a Centre of Study of Economics of East European Countries. In the same year, the Reserve Bank of India instituted a Chair in Finance at the Institute.
The Dhananjaya Rao Gadgil Library was established in 1905 as a public library under the aegis of Servants of India Society with late Gopal Krishna Gokhale as one of its founding members. With the establishment of GIPE in 1930, the Library has started to act as the library of the Institute. Presently the Library is housed in a majestic four-storey building, which is a rare combination of colonial and modern architecture. Besides, some of the Library collections are also housed in a separate building inside the campus of the Institute.
The Library has one of the largest collections of social science documents in India. The total collection exceeds 2.5 lakhs of books and 470 national and international journals. It has a large number of publications on Economics and all allied social science subjects and successfully caters to the needs of scholars, academicians, policy makers and other users working in social science subjects in India and abroad. Though attached to GIPE, the library extends membership to outsiders also and thereby performs the dual function of an academic and a public library as well.
The Library is a depository library of the publications of the United Nations and its agencies, the World Bank, the European Economic Community, the International Monetary Fund, and the Government of Canada. The Library possesses quite a large number of rare books published before the advent of twentieth century and which may not be available elsewhere. The oldest book in the Library dates back to 1680. Besides, there are quite a few hundred books which were published during the 18th and 19th centuries.
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