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Indian Express
31-07-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Meghnad Desai, an economist of many parts
I got to know Meghnad Desai well over the last two decades, and especially over the last 10 years. He had been unwell for some time, but his mind was as acute and incisive as ever. It was a life well lived, and I want to celebrate my good fortune of having known him 'closely' over the last decade. In many discussions (arguments) between friends, Meghnad was never at a loss for insight. Gentleness marked his approach to people — but not towards bad ideas. I had the occasion to visit him often at the House of Lords, dining and even being allowed to sit in on the debates. No visit to London was complete without a joint meal with Meghnad. We had a lot in common — cricket, economics and the difficulty of economic reforms in India, and a passionate interest in politics and films (and he has many books on politics, and one book on films — Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India). His greatest accomplishment is his book The Rediscovery of India. It starts with Vasco da Gama and extends to the end of the UPA's first term. His views on the destructive economic policies of the Congress party, Jawaharlal Nehru to Sonia Gandhi, anticipated what is now conventional wisdom. Meghnad was kind, a gentle and modest soul, with a lot to be immodest about. In many ways, he had no equal. He obtained his PhD at the age of 23, the youngest Indian to do so, along with K N Raj. While trained as an econometrician, he was everywhere in thought. His well-known works include a considerable amount on Marxian economics, including Marxian Economic Theory, a book that compares and contrasts Marxian economics with their classical and neoclassical avatars. Just so that nobody can typecast him, there are his treatises on the pricing of tin in the world market, problems with Phillips curve, history of economic thought, on Islam (Rethinking Islamism), The Poverty of Political Economy, on globalisation, and climate change. I could not find a single important economic or political economy topic that he has not written expertly on — with facts, figures, and dispassionate analysis. Sir David Hendry, a world-renowned econometrician at LSE, wrote in Arguing about the World – The Work and Legacy of Meghnad Desai (2011): 'In an era when specialisation has been a dominant force, his many and diverse contributions are a welcome beacon of genuine multi-disciplinarity, and a leading indicator of a recent recognition of the benefits of drawing on a range of skills and knowledge.' His independence of thought and action are illustrated by several acts of commission. He was at LSE, a university founded on the principles of Fabian socialism, but was extremely critical of the practice of socialism in England, and elsewhere. He was made a member of the House of Lords by the Labour Party, but resigned over its acts of racism and antisemitism. He was a 19th-century liberal renaissance individual — captivated by ideas, their origins, consequences, and remedies. He possessed, in abundance, both intellectual integrity and rigor in thought. He was a classical political economist, though his training and early career was, for lack of a better word, as a quantitative economist. From a very early age (try 23!) he was at the forefront of econometric modelling. He obtained his PhD under the guidance of Lawrence Klein, a Nobel Prize-winning pioneer in macro-modelling. His short articles for Elara Global Research summarised the economic and political scene in India, and did so as a one-handed political economist. Clear, concise, dispassionate in analysis but deeply passionate about the issues. As a young kid, I often heard a band with a funeral procession. I was told that when an old person passes away (Meghnad was 85), it is a celebration for a life well-lived. I will drink to that. Especially to the fact that Meghnad held himself up to the highest sense of intellectual integrity, a rare individual in a polarised world. Bhalla is chairperson of the Technical Expert Group for the first official Household Income Survey for India
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Business Standard
30-07-2025
- Politics
- Business Standard
Obituary: Meghnad Desai was true gadfly in the best sense of the word
Lord Meghnad Desai St Clement Danes, the Vadodara-born British academic-politician, who died yesterday at the age of 85, is often described as an economist. He was doubtless a renowned practitioner of the dismal science, but to call him a mere economist is to do injustice to his multi-faceted personality. His long-running weekly column in the Sunday Express covered his forthright thoughts on politics, governance, culture, and whatever else was happening in the world at large besides economics. His oeuvre of more than 20 volumes contains two novels and Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India (2004). He called this biography of the thespian, whom he called the best actor not just in India but in the world, his most satisfying work. For the record, his other books covered Marxian economics, econometrics, development economics, among others. Although an atheist, he wrote a well-received volume called Who Wrote the Bhagavadgita? A secular enquiry into a sacred text (2014). Lord Desai took his bachelor's and master's degrees from what was then the University of Bombay. He went on to do post-graduate work in econometrics at the University of Pennsylvania and obtained his doctorate at the young age of 23. He spent most of his academic career at the London School of Economics. Besides teaching, he held various administrative responsibilities at that Mecca of studies of economics. In the United Kingdom, he joined the Labour Party and was an active participant in its policy formations for three decades after 1980. He was made a life peer in 1991. He once ran, unsuccessfully, for the position of the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords. He became gradually disenchanted with the party and resigned his membership in 2020 after nearly 50 years, citing the Labour's increasing drift towards antisemitism, especially under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, as the reason. Although an early admirer of Marxian thought, he was not a doctrinaire Marxist. He was particularly critical of the statist version of socialism in Britain as well as in India. He held Jawaharlal Nehru in high esteem, but thought that the socialistic pattern of society ushered in after the 1963 Avadi session of the Congress held India back and was the main reason for its falling behind on the development curve post the mid-1960s. The title of his 2002 book, Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, succinctly sums up his position. He was also increasingly critical of monetarists. After the 2014 crisis affecting many advanced economies, he wrote a volume Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One. He was no blind admirer of what happened in India post liberalisation either. His 2010 interview with Sucheta Dalal and Debasish Basu of Moneylife was entitled 'If only bureaucrats and the politicians got out of the way, people would do fine.' Interestingly, he called KYC Kick Your Customer, a term which most accurately describes the process as it is practiced even today!\ He met Kishwar Ahluwalia in the course of writing his biography of Dilip Kumar. She was his editor. They married, both for the second time, in 2004. Lord and Lady Desai were very prominent in the social circles of London, Delhi and Mumbai. Given his widespread interests in politics, food, films and sometimes even cricket, he was a frequent guest on numerous talk shows. He made quite an impression with his distinguished appearance with a halo of hair and his sonorous voice. He wore his scholarship lightly in these discussions and was immensely popular. For decades, critics and biographers have claimed that W Somerset Maugham described himself as 'in the very first row of the second-raters.' This has no authentication on record. He was most likely a writer keenly aware of his strengths and limitations, but never self-deprecating to the point of dismissing his own work. Like Maugham, Lord Desai never took himself too seriously, but never doubted his contributions. He used his sharp wit and varied interests to provoke others into action, the mark of a true gadfly in the best sense of the word.
New Indian Express
30-07-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Lord Meghnad Desai: Economist, Mahatma Gandhi baiter, Dilip Kumar fan and much more
Lord Meghnad Desai, by his own admission, was a short-term pessimist and a medium-run optimist. The renowned British Indian economist and House of Lords peer, taught econometrics at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE), and dabbled in developmental economics, macroeconomics and Marxian economics. His multi-disciplinary thinking and commitment to social justice drew Desai into writing on a range of subjects besides economics such as films and even the Bhagavad Gita. He once casually quipped that his book on Bollywood actor Dilip Kumar -- Nehru's Hero Dilip Kumar -- was his greatest achievement. But as Desai later clarified, the comment was 'mostly facetious,' because he met his second wife Kishwar Desai (former TV personality Kishwar Ahluwalia) while she was editing the book. His first marriage lasted 25 years, from which he has three children. Desai specialized in teaching Marxist economics and wrote several books including Marxian Economic Theory in 1973 (revised later in 1979), Applied Econometrics, Testing Monetarism, Marxian Economic Theory, Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the death of Statist Socialism. Some of his other offbeat books include The Rediscovery of India and Who Wrote the Bhagavad Gita. His other academic contributions include over 200 scholarly articles. Among all the books he wrote, his actual favourite is Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the death of Statist Socialism, which he termed as a 'globaliser's' book, championing the full freedom of movement of capital, labour, trade and migrants. The book's central argument was, if it came to a choice between the market and the state to goose the economy, modern libertarians would be as shocked as modern socialists to find Marx on the side of the market. "If it came to a choice between whether the Market or the State should rule the economy, the modern libertarians would be shocked as much as the modern socialists to find Marx on the side of the Market," he wrote in the book. Analysing some of Marx's lesser-known writings, he argued that his theories enhance our understanding of modern capitalism and globalization. First, that international trade is good for poor countries, workers have an interest in being exploited by capitalists, as high profits guarantee employment. Third, states are inefficient and markets efficient. He went to show how, in theory and in argument, Marx was committed to the idea that capitalism has to flower fully if it is to allow the bourgeois class to fulfil its modernising destiny. The book briefly surveyed 150 years of global capitalism and some of its leading thinkers including Adam Smith, Lenin, Schumpeter, Hayek, Polanyi, Keynes and Marx. Religion rebel Interestingly, Desai was actively opinionated about religion and pretty often. In January 2012, delivering a lecture at the Prof Ramlal Parikh Memorial Lecture organised by the Indian Society for Community Education, Desai castigated Gandhi's use of the Gita as it condoned violence and equated the Mahabharata war to a holocaust. He raised two issues. First about Gandhiji's endorsement of Bhagavad Gita, and his 'admiration' towards Hitler. "How could someone of Gandhiji's intellect make a mistake on Hitler? How could food and drink habits could be mistaken for virtues?" he wondered. He didn't stop there. In September 2012, he delivered another lecture at the Nalanda University in Bihar on the same topic, this time titled The Bhagavad Gita: A secular inquiry into a sacred text, which caused quite a stir. He argued that the holy book was not "a suitable text for modern India" and further questioned, "Why are we respecting the text uncritically, which has so many flaws?" Subsequently, in 2014, he developed it into a book, Who Wrote the Bhagavadgita: A Secular Enquiry into a Sacred Text, as a humanist critique of the sacred text. Desai, himself, confessed multiple times that he wasn't an expert on scriptures and that he was a self-proclaimed atheist. Still, he went on to outline how the Gita reinforces social inequity and lack of concern for others. Needless to say, Desai's views perplexed critics who concluded that perhaps, Desai found the Gita confusing, and difficult with a scant understanding of the intricacies of Vedic philosophy. They maintained that while Desai may be an intellectual giant in the field of economics, 'he was intellectually bankrupt in the field of Indian philosophy'. That aside, Desai was not new to controversies. Be it with his sensational remarks that India was never an ancient nation, or attacking the Narendra Modi government for the high-profile exits of the Reserve Bank of India governors, or the "spectacularly foolish" move to get the government's hands on RBI reserves, or spending on "stupidities" like farm loan waivers and so on. Outside India, he was under the spotlight for dispatching a letter complaining how the Asia House (in the UK) had withdrawn offensively anti-Hindu paintings by MF Hussain. Separately, he found in Labour's crosshairs for his remarks in a TV interview urging the government to impose VAT and bridge the budget deficit. Prior to that, he created a flutter for his remarks on the Church when he said: "Like my noble friend Lord Dormand I am an atheist and therefore should not speak too much about religion, but I am glad that the Church of England, having lost money in real estate, is now interested in sex and making money. That is always welcome." In 2003, he landed himself in yet another controversy for admitting dictator Colonel Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, into the London School of Economics. Amid an uproar that that Saif plagarised his PhD, Desai reasoned that the admission wasn't based on parentage but purely based on scholastic merit. But he drew ire for accepting the £1.5 million financial donation from Gaddafi. Eventually, in 2020, he resigned as a member of the UK's Labour party over its failure to effectively tackle antisemitic racism within its ranks. "I have been very uncomfortable and slightly ashamed that the party has been injected with this sort of racism. Jewish MPs were abused openly, and female members were trolled. It is out and out racism," he said. He had joined the Labour party in 1971 and was elevated to the House of Lords in June, 1991. From Baroda to Britain Desai's journey from Baroda to Britain is rather interesting. As a kid, his maternal uncle once locked him up in a dark bathroom for 20-30 minutes for being mischievous, and that unmemorable incident influenced his decision to migrate. "...In fact, I would say that I may have rejected the prospect of my staying on in India once I had the chance to go abroad for this very reason," he recalled in an interview. His journey in the US began at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his PhD in economics in 1963, but it was at the University of California-Berkley that shaped his political leanings decisively towards the Left. It's also where he first met Nobel Laurette Amartya Sen and also participated in various student protests against the Vietnam War and others. Incidentally, Desai was appointed as a lecturer at LSE in 1965 on the eve of a student rebellion! In 1983, he became a Professor of Economics and went on to head LSE's Development Studies Institute (1990-95) and found and lead LSE Global Governance (1992-2003). Desai, a Padma Bhushan awardee, taught economics during his prolonged stint at the LSE from 1965 to 2003, saw his research interests on a variety of subjects -- Marxian analysis, applied econometrics, Indian development and reform, poverty, globalisation, and the role of private markets. He founded the Centre for Study of Global Governance at LSE, as well as its Development Studies programme. Importantly, he was one of the creators of the Human Development Index (HDI) -- an inclusive index that quantifies development not by what is to be achieved but by what has been achieved. After retiring from LSE, in 2015 he collaborated with his former students to set up the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics (MDAE) in Mumbai. His passing away at the age of 85 leaves a gaping void in many spheres.
The Print
30-07-2025
- Politics
- The Print
Meghnad Desai was a man of many passions. Marxian economics, politics to Bollywood
In 1965, Meghnad joined the LSE as a professor of econometrics. But over time, his interests and his contributions as a professor and as a researcher and writer broadened. His major contribution to improving the LSE was the Development Studies Institute and the Global Governance Centre. He brought me into the centre as a Distinguished Fellow when I retired from the United Nations. In the first few years of his life in London, we met regularly because his home was where I stayed when I came to London from Liverpool or Southampton, where I worked at the universities. What connected us was not just our shared Leftist political inclinations but much more, including our shared interest in films, novels, and Gujarati food. All of this shows up in the vast variety of Meghnad's actions and achievements in his life. July is a rather special month in Meghnad Desai's life. He was born on 10 July 1940, he married Kishwar on 20 July 2004, and now he has departed from this world on 29 July 2025. We met 60 years ago when he joined the London School of Economics as a lecturer, and I had just finished my master's degree there. This connection, inspired by our shared surname, was also in July 1965. He taught and wrote about Marxian economics, development economics and later also on broader issues about the global economy and political economy. He never lost his interest in Marxist thought, and at the beginning of the new millennium and a little more than a decade after the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, he wrote a truly interesting book Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism. I do believe he thought that, despite the rise of capitalist belief in politics, the socialist goals would be restored in political life. In 1970, he married Gail Wilson, his first wife, who was connected with the Labour Party. Much of his active political focus was with the Labour Party. Though he did become the Party's chairperson and shadow cabinet member, his politics perhaps became less hard Leftist beyond his youth. He was independent-minded in his political statements, and he continued as a relatively independent member of the House of Lords, though he formally separated from the Labour Party only in 2020. Meghnad retained his interest in Indian politics throughout. Talking about it was a part of our arguments in the post-Nehru years for some time after 1965. In more recent years, his interest and contribution became much more intense. He participated in public events in India connected with politics and policy matters, contributed much through his newspaper columns and was even honoured by the Indian Government in 2008 when he was awarded a Padma Bhushan. In 2014, he set up the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust to raise resources to build a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square in front of the UK Parliament House. Also read: Lord Meghnad Desai belonged to no camp—and, somehow, to every camp at once A good life Meghnad's interest went much beyond economics and politics. This is reflected in his writing, particularly after his retirement as a full-time LSE Professor in 2003 (though he did continue as an Emeritus Professor for life). He wrote a book about Dilip Kumar, and that is when he met his second wife, Kishwar, who was the editor of the book. His passion for cinema was a long-standing element in his life. During our get-togethers in his house in the late sixties, he relished telling me about Hindi films, showing them when possible. I remember his detailed, scene-by-scene description of the Mehboob Khan film Andaz, which he considered near perfect! Meghnad was a devoted secularist who formally became an associate of the National Secular Society in Britain. But he did apply his academic strength to studying Hinduism and wrote a couple of books, including one on the Bhagwat Gita, where he argued that some elements there supported social inequality. What is remarkable in Meghnad's life is the range of ideas and activities in which he was involved. And for those of us who connected with him personally, what we will miss is his warmth and courtesy, his delightful sense of humour, his sociability which saw him connecting with a vast range of people in India, Britain and elsewhere. Meghnad had a good life, and Kishwar was a great source of love and support for him. All of us who have been his friends and associates join Kishwar, his three children from his first wife and the rest of the family, not just in mourning his departure, but also in celebrating his life. (Edited by Theres Sudeep)
The Print
30-07-2025
- Business
- The Print
Lord Meghnad Desai belonged to no camp—and, somehow, to every camp at once
For Lord Desai, the pursuit of knowledge was a lifelong passion. Whether delving into Marxian economics, monetary policy, and economic history or celebrating Mughal-e-Azam, his works spanned disciplines with equal rigour, each contribution enduring in its relevance. Elevated as a Labour life peer in 1991, he never allowed party lines to contain his views. Known for his cross-party affiliations in the UK's House of Lords, he regularly crossed swords—and built bridges—across ideological divides. On one occasion, as a classmate recalls, he was animatedly engrossed in conversation—his intellectual charm magnetically appealing—when he noticed an awestruck student lingering nearby. 'Ah,' he muttered good-naturedly, 'private affairs of public figures,' with the nonchalant air of a Peer of the Realm indulging in an innocent dalliance amid academia's halls. Lord Meghnad Desai carried his natural halo with grace and not a hint of pomposity. His untamed yet striking shock of white hair was a familiar sight to those of us who, as students, encountered him in the hallways of the London School of Economics. Though matters of state often kept him away—far more so than other faculty during my years there—when spotted in London, he invariably wore an impish smile and offered a wry remark on contemporary affairs, whether the evolving politics of Europe or the tumult of India. This refusal to be pigeonholed also extended to India. He advised successive governments, from Congress reformers to BJP-led regimes, bringing sharp intellect and empirical ballast to economic policy. Finance ministers and prime ministers alike valued his ability to question prevailing assumptions, often with evidence-laced humour. Also read: PM Modi condoles demise of economist Meghnad Desai, hails his role in deepening India-UK ties A master in every sense Beneath the economist's mantle lay a quieter passion: cinema. Beyond his academic stature, he took visible pride in his silver-screen debut—a cameo in the Sharmila Tagore and Soha Ali Khan film Life Goes On (2009)—a modern retelling of King Lear—alongside old friends Girish Karnad and Om Puri. Karnad and Desai were mates in college, and lore has it they once shared a stage in student dramas before making names in their respective fields. Years after publishing Marx's Revenge (2002)—a bold argument for Marx's relevance in the era of globalisation—he was genuinely astonished when a classmate referenced its dense calculations. 'You actually read it?' he asked in that characteristically self-deprecating tone. He wore his erudition lightly, authoring incisive studies on India's economic reforms while dispensing razor-sharp insights to anyone who sought them. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted in his tribute, Lord Desai was a regular commentator on reform, engaging with regulators and heads of state alike. His pithy observations often revealed their wisdom long after the moment had passed. In his later years, spent largely in India, Lord Desai's trenchant op-eds pierced even the high walls of North Block and the Prime Minister's Office. Some mistook his critiques as quiet lobbying for official roles—a notion he laughed off when teased by former students like me. He remained generous with his time, mentoring young scholars, policy wonks, and the occasional disoriented LSE alumnus. He was, in every sense, a master—an honorific he'd playfully redirect to me whenever I addressed him as 'My Lord'. Globalisation and liberalisation were his intellectual playgrounds. He helmed the inaugural Chevening Fellowship on Globalisation, guiding India's brightest minds to the LSE. A visionary institution-builder, he founded LSE's Centre for the Study of Global Governance and its Development Studies programme, and had earlier co-created the Human Development Index with Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq—a pathbreaking metric that looked beyond GDP to define progress. To those who knew him closely, there was also a distinctly Bengali warmth—a side reserved for students and confidants. When my father passed away abruptly mid-term, Lord Desai sat me down upon my return and said, with gentle sagacity, 'The grief will come in waves. Write through it, and you'll finish your course.' It was advice as practical as it was profound. Even in his eighties, he remained a prolific public intellectual. His columns in Indian newspapers sparked debate in Delhi drawing rooms as easily as in Westminster salons. He relished contrarian takes—not for performance, but because curiosity compelled him to probe every orthodoxy. Today, that halo shines brighter still, as he ascends to higher realms, leaving behind admirers, friends, and a legacy that transcends borders. Lord Meghnad Desai belonged to no camp—and, somehow, to every camp at once. His life's work, like his persona, was expansive, restless, and wholly original. Dilip Cherian, India's Image Guru, was a student of Lord Desai at the LSE. Views are personal. (Edited by Ratan Priya)
