PB Thiagarajan, the former Deputy Editor who anchored the business pages of The Hindu, passed away at his home in Adyar, Chennai, on Tuesday morning. He was 87. PBT, as he was known among friends and colleagues, is survived by his wife Gomathi and two sons. His father, Balakrishna Iyer, had worked at The Hindu in the accounts department.
Friends and former colleagues remember PBT as a very soft-spoken person. “He also anchored the widely read Science and Technology supplement of The Hindu, which was published on Wednesdays. He would get the latest stories published in American and British journals and commissioned articles from experts at Indian research institutions,” recalled a former colleague.
PBT joined the newspaper in September 1961 as a sub editor and retired as Deputy Editor in August 2001. He worked for another eight years, from August 2002 to July 2010.
For many years, he also anchored the annual business survey published by The Hindu, the Survey of Indian Industry.
Having completed his schooling in Kumbakonam, where he was born, he did his BA in Mathematics (Hons) from the RKM Vivekananda College in Chennai and his M.Sc. in Statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata.
Before joining The Hindu, he worked at the National Council of Applied Economic Research on future demand and supply of specified agricultural commodities, the all India consumption survey, and the all India rural savings survey (pilot).