Binay Ranjan Sen

Who was Binay Ranjan Sen?

Binay Ranjan Sen, CIE, ICS, was an Indian diplomat and Indian Civil Service officer. He served as Director General of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. He drew on his experience as relief commissioner during the Bengal famine of 1943 to build the FAO from a data-gathering bureaucracy into a major force against world hunger.

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, 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, 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.