Binay Ranjan Sen

Not to be confused with Indian biophysicist, Ranjan Sen.

Binay Ranjan Sen CIE
Sen as ambassador to Yugoslavia
Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization
In office November 1956 – December 1967
Preceded by	Philip V. Cardon
Succeeded by	Addeke Hendrik Boerma
3rd Ambassador of India to Japan
In office 17 February 1955 – September 1956
Prime Minister	Jawaharlal Nehru
Preceded by	M. A. Rauf
Succeeded by	Chandra Shekhar Jha
4th Ambassador of India to the United States
In office 1951–1952
Prime Minister	Jawaharlal Nehru
Preceded by	Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Succeeded by	Gaganvihari Lallubhai Mehta
Personal details
Born	(1898-01-01)1 January 1898 Dibrugarh, North-East Frontier, India (present-day Assam)
Died	12 June 1993(1993-06-12) (aged 95) Calcutta, West Bengal, India (present-day Kolkata)
Alma mater	Scottish Church College (BS) University of Oxford
Occupation	Civil servant

Binay Ranjan Sen (1 January 1898 – 12 June 1993) was an Indian civil servant and diplomat. He served as director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations from 1956 to 1967. He drew on his experience as relief commissioner from 1942 to 1943 during the Bengal famine of 1943 to build the FAO from a data-gathering bureaucracy into a major force against world hunger.

Biography

He studied at the Scottish Church College of the University of Calcutta and subsequently at the University of Oxford. Sen joined the Indian Civil Service in Bengal in 1922. His work as director general of food for all India (1943–1946), for which he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1944, convinced him that hunger and malnutrition were crucial issues in the modern world.

He took his concerns to the international stage as a member of India's first delegation to the UN (1947), as Indian Ambassador to the United States, and several other countries including Italy, Yugoslavia, Japan, and Mexico. He worked on a variety of FAO projects before being named Director General in 1956. While he was the Relief Commissioner(1942–43)in Bengal during Bengal famine, his mission of preventing hunger was set. In 1960, saying half the world's population was malnourished, Sen announced the Freedom from Hunger campaign. "Hunger is neither inevitable nor irremediable," he added, "it is within our power to bring this old affliction under control." This led to the 1963 World Food Congress in Washington, D.C., attended by representatives from more than 100 countries.

See also

• Freedom from Hunger, US charity associated with the UN campaign

Further reading

• Towards a Newer World by B. R. Sen, published by Tycooly International Publishing Ltd, Dublin (ISBN 0907567274)
• The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945-1965 by Amy L. S. Staples. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005 (ISBN 0873388496)

External links

• On the B.R.Sen Award - 1 Archived 12 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• On the B.R.Sen Award - 2 Archived 22 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine
• On the Second World Food Congress in The Hague, Netherlands 16-30 June 1970
• Freedom from Hunger Campaign, Germany