Ashok Yeshwant KOTWAL

ASHOK YESHWANT KOTWAL Ashok Yeshwant Kotwal passed away peacefully on April 28, 2022, surrounded by his family. He was born on July 11, 1945, in Mumbai, India to Yeshwant Kotwal and Indira Dikshit Kotwal, the youngest of four children. In 1966, he graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) with a degree in electrical engineering. Shortly after, he went to the US to pursue a Masters in Electrical Engineering at University of Idaho where he met Truus van der Sluys. They were married in 1971 and moved to Massachusetts. Although he enjoyed engineering, he was more interested in social problems. He had been inspired by his sister, Sudha, and her economics professor husband, Anoo, who both worked to help the poor in Mumbai's slums. Ashok was driven to understand the most basic of questions: why are so many countries so poor? This question would define his career. He obtained a PhD at Boston University in 1981, before moving to Vancouver to take a professorship job in the Vancouver School of Economics (then Dept. of Economics) at Unversity of British Columbia, where he would work for nearly forty years. Ashok inspired countless students to study economics in order to understand the world. He was the first director of the Bachelor of International Economics (BIE) degree. He was also the founder of the journal Ideas for India (I4I), and remained its Chief Editor to the end of his life. Ashok's decency, his humour and his warmth drew students and others from all corners. And he had time for them all. There was no such thing as 'office hours'. His door was always open. Nobody came away from Ashok feeling misunderstood. No problem was too minor for his attention. No time was a bad time. To many, he seemed a perfect human. But he never thought so. He was ridiculously humble and grateful for how good his life turned out. Though Ashok never thought anyone could be perfect, he did admit that, in special cases, and in narrow ways, perfection could be reached. He thought Ken Griffey Jr. had a perfect swing, Michael Jordan a perfect jump-shot, Sachin Tendulkar a perfect leg-glance, and Roger Federer the perfect forehand. But unwittingly Ashok himself had perfected one thing. To the many of us who could claim him as one, he was the perfect friend. Ashok is survived by his wife, Truus; his two daughters, Sasha (Matt) and Shanu (Warren); and his three grandchildren, Elizabeth, Elliott, and Claire.