Meghnad Desai: The view from classroom

Hindustan Times

04-08-2025

Noted economist and Labour peer Meghnad Desai passed away recently. Few individuals command such universal recognition — his impact transcended not just borders but boundaries of language, discipline, and realm of thought. Meghnad Desai left an indelible mark on all of his students. His last message to one of us was: 'Keep reading widely and hang on to some of your ideas but you will have a lot more to learn than you realise'. (HT Archive)
For both of us, he embodied the ideal of the great teacher. We were from the first batch of Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics. Desai, in one of his lectures, quoted Keynes's description of a master economist: 'A master economist…must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought.'
Desai's style of teaching changed the way we engaged with ideas and understood the world.
We were in the international political economy course he taught. Through this class, I (Patel) became fascinated by the effects of the Industrial Revolution on weavers in India and wrote a short paper exploring how the Lancashire model and its replication in Britain impacted these communities. I approached him at his office. He immediately invited me to sit; enjoying his pizza and coke, he read through my work and, almost offhandedly, began discussing the various arguments that scholars have debated around this topic. What he considered a casual ramble could easily have passed for the literature review section of a scholarly paper on industrialisation in India.
During one of his lectures where he was working out a proof (perhaps of the Hecksher-Ohlin model), I (Misra) had asked him a question related to the math on the board but not directly to the topic. Without missing a beat, he adapted the equations to tackle the query, but after a brief pause, admitted with a twinkle in his eye that he had momentarily lost his way. With characteristic wit, he referenced his age, joking that he would revisit the question the following day.
Later, when I dropped by his office to discuss another doubt, I found him completely absorbed, meticulously working through lines of equations — determined to pinpoint exactly which sign or step had eluded him earlier. Before him, along with his notebook, was an open box of pizza and a can of Coke, leftovers from a working lunch that he had put aside in his pursuit of clarity.
We recall many water-cooler conversations with peers marvelling at how he didn't need to be this way — but perhaps he simply couldn't help it. That was the only way he knew.
He cared deeply for knowledge, for his students, and for their learning. He remained committed to that ideal.
In the midst of all this, he was very alive to humour, too. He once made a joke about the oddity of naming an institute after someone still alive — which had the entire hall erupting in laughter.
His passion rubbed off on us in many ways. When I (Misra) reached out to him for advice on doctoral studies — confessing a preference for 'real-world problems' over purely theoretical work — he shared a perspective that fundamentally shifted my outlook: 'You know, Prakhar, the biggest advantage of theory is that theory saves time. Imagine being able to work out what the outcome of a policy will be before actually implementing it!' After that, theory no longer felt like an abstract exercise detached from reality.
Desai left an indelible mark on us. His last message to one of us was: 'Keep reading widely and hang on to some of your ideas but you will have a lot more to learn than you realise'. Young minds need that kind of energy — that pushes you forward but also slows you down just enough to learn, reflect and grow.
It is far beyond our abilities to discuss his contributions to academia and literature or to comment on the large body of knowledge he has left behind. What we can say is that he did fit very well this verse:
'Jis jaanib bhi mitti uda doon, naye aaftaab paida ho jaaye.
Filhaal bachchon mein hoon, sabun ke gubbaare banata hoon'.
(Wherever I fling dust, new suns rise. When I'm with children, I shape bubbles).
Prakhar Misra is at Johns Hopkins University and Ayush Patel is with L74 Craft Ciders. The views expressed are personal.