Economist and House of Lords Peer Meghnad Desai Dies

Meghnad Desai, the 85-year-old British economist and House of Lords member who passed away on 29 July, was a prominent and much respected figure, both in the UK and in the country of birth, India.

Desai was one of those rare figures who straddled the worlds of academia and politics, and rising to prominence in both fields. As a scholar, he wrote prolifically (with over 35 books on a wide range of subjects, hundreds of papers in reputed journals, and commentaries in newspapers), and had a long and distinguished career at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he headed the Development Studies Institute and became Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance. As a politician, he was an active member of the British Labour Party, even becoming chairman between 1986 and 1992, and was made a life peer. But he would go on to quit the party in 2020, citing growing antisemitism within the party.

Desai was to a middle-class household in Vadodara in 1940. His father worked as a civil servant and his mother was a homemaker. Like many bright young men from that period, Desai would then move to what was then Bombay as a young scholar, earning a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Ramnarain Ruia College, and later a master’s degree in the same discipline from the University of Mumbai’s Department of Economics. It was probably in Bombay, where a young Desai is believed to have immersed himself in theatre and watch every new Bollywood release, where his interest in Dilip Kumar also grew. Desai, who would equate Kumar’s abilities with other acting greats like Marlon Brando, Toshiro Mifune and Marcello Mastroianni, also went on to write a biography on the actor, Nehru’s Hero: Dilip Kumar In The Life Of India, a book that he would call his ‘greatest achievement’. His passion with movies aside, he was also a celebrated economist. From Bombay, he would bag a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he would complete a PhD in Economics in 1963, before moving to London, where he was appointed a lecturer at the LSE, and later became Professor of Economics there, and went on to head the Development Studies Institute, and set up and became the Centre for the Study of Global Governance’s Director. As an economist, he would look at a range of topics, from the impact of the private sector and the state on development and Marxian economics to India’s economic reforms and development and the effects of globalisation and liberalisation. Desai was also one of the creators of the Human Development Index.

Desai’s journey in British politics began in 1971, when he joined the Labour Party, and he would go on to be made a life peer 1991. As the Chairman of the Gandhi Memorial Statue Trust, he would also play an instrumental role in getting the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in London’s Parliament Square erected. Desai’s association with the Labour Party would however end in disillusionment. A report by the country’s human rights watchdog Equality and Human Rights Commission that flagged off growing antisemitism within the party had been released less than a month, and Jeremy Corbyn, who had been suspended for saying the scale of antisemitism had been ‘dramatically overstated’, had gotten readmitted into the party. “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 would tell journalists later.

Back in his home country, Desai remained a familiar face in our news pages, known as much for his incisive commentary as his growing prominence in British society and politics. He received many awards in his lifetime, including a Padma Bhushan in 2008.
With his death, the story of a multifaceted personality and achiever, comes to an end.

deatheconomistglobal governanceMarlon BrandoMeghnad DesaiobituaryRamnarain Ruia CollegeToshiro Mifune and Marcello Mastroianni