Former bureaucrat Sanjivi Sundar, who initiated external commercial borrowings by Indian entities, died of COVID-19 on Friday, his family said. Sundar, who was a 1963-batch IAS officer of Gujarat cadre, served as Distinguished Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Emeritus Professor in TERI University after retiring from the government service.
“My father, Sanjivi Sundar, just passed away. He had covid. This is for the information of his large circle of friends and colleagues,” his daughter Nandini Sundar tweeted.
Sundar, 82, is survived by his wife Pushpa and daughters Aparna and Nandini. Nandini Sundar is a professor and the wife of senior journalist Siddharth Varadarajan.
Having joined civil services in 1963, he retired as Secretary to the Government in the Ministry of Surface Transport in 1997. During his 34 year service, he worked in districts of Gujarat as well as other state government departments, including as additional chief secretary of finance. In the central government, he worked as a director in the Ministry of Fertilizers and Chemicals and joint secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance.
During his stint in the Finance Ministry, he initiated external commercial borrowing of Indian commercial entities both in the public and private sector, according to his bio-data. Subsequently, he spent some 8 years in the consultancy arm of the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation in London.
