Sir George Rainy ^13,16

  General Notes:

From The Times, January 29, 1946

The India Tariff Board
Sir George Rainy, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E., who died in hospital in
Edinburgh on Sunday at the age of 70, was the first president of the
Indian Tariff Board, called into being to investigate the claims of
nascent or handicapped Indian industries to be supported by protective
import duties.
He was the son of an outstanding figure in Church life in Scotland,
the Rev. Dr. Robert Rainy, principal for many years of the New
College, Edinburgh. After education at Edinburgh Academy George
Rainy pased the Indian Civil Service examination of 1898, and spent
his year's probation at Merton College, Oxford. He went out to
Bengal, but was transferred to Bihar and Orissa when those provinces
were merged in 1912 on the annulment of the Bengal partition which was
announced by King George V at the great Delhi Durbar.
Rainy's aptitude for finance led to his being made in 194 financial
member of the committee charged with the duty of implementing the
decision to build New Delhi. In the middle of the 1914-18 war he was
made deputy secretary of the financial department of the Central
Government. He went back to Patna in 1919 as chief secretary to the
provincial Government.
When the Tariff Board was established on the recommendation of the
commission under the chairmanship of the late Sir Ibrahim Rahimtoola
he was selected for the office of president. The Board was set up in
pursuance of the convention that the Secretary of State for India
would not intervene when the Central Government and its Legislature
were in agreement on tariff matters. Rainy took care that the
investigations of the Board should be thorough, and that its
recommendations should conform to the principles laid down by the
commission. After four years of this work Rainy succeeded Sir Charles
Innes as commerce and railway member of the Viceroy's Executive
Council. He was a delegate of India to the Monetary and Economic
Conference held in London in 1934, and in 1938 accepted the
chairmanship of the Trustee Savings Bank Association. He remained
unmarried.

  Noted events in his life were:

1. He appeared on the census in 1881 in 23 Douglas Crescent, Edinburgh.

2. Resided: 27 January 1946, 15 Comiston Drive, Edinburgh. ¹³