Meghnad Desai, eminent Indian-born economist and author, dies at 85

Lord Meghnad Desai, a “multifaceted personality”, eminent economist, holder of India’s third-highest civilian honour, and a member of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords has passed away on Tuesday (July 29, 2025), at the age of 85.

Commenting on the loss, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to the social media platform X to say he was “anguished by the passing away of Shri Meghnad Desai Ji, a distinguished thinker, writer and economist”. 

“He always remained connected to India and Indian culture,” Mr. Modi added. “He also played a role in deepening India-U.K. ties. Will fondly recall our discussions, where he shared his valuable insights. Condolences to his family and friends. Om Shanti.”

Born Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai, Lord Desai, as he came to be known following his membership to the House of Lords in the U.K., was born in Vadodara in 1940. After completing his Bachelor’s in economics from the University of Mumbai, he went on to finish his Master’s degree from the same university before securing a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his PhD in economics in 1963— three years after he secured admission there. 

Desai’s personality, as well as his professional and personal accomplishments can perhaps best be encapsulated by what Montek Singh Ahluwalia wrote about him in the book ‘Arguing about the World: The Work and Legacy of Meghnad Desai’.

“I have known Meghnad for many years in a staggering variety of avatars: as a one-time Marxist economist, a mainstream economist/econometrician at LSE, a Labour Party activist, a Labour Member of the House of Lords … a keen and surprisingly good cook, an insightful observer of the Indian political scene, a regular columnist in one of India’s leading newspapers, a biographer of one of the best-loved Bollywood icons of yesteryear, most recently a late-blossoming novelist, and above all a wonderful raconteur and bon vivant,” Mr. Ahluwalia wrote in his chapter of the book.

The book, published in 2011, also has eminent economist Jagdish Bhagwati describing Desai as being at the “forefront of discussions on Indian public policy for many years”. 

Desai’s early works certainly were focused on the Marxian way of thought, including his first book Marxian Economic Theory (1973), which was relatively quickly followed up by Applied Econometrics (1976), and Marxian Economics (1979), which was a revised edition of his 1973. He then wrote a critique on monetarism — the economic theory that focuses on the role of money supply in influencing economic activity and price levels — in 1981.

Through all this, Desai also committed himself to an illustrious teaching career, primarily at the London School of Economics. 

Notably, in 2002, he wrote Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism in which he argued that the ongoing trend of globalisation would eventually lead in the direction of a revival of socialism.

The overwhelming focus European societies place on social security, and the ongoing trend even in India of increasing doles to the electorate suggests Desai might not have been far off the mark in his analysis.

In total, Desai wrote or edited more than 20 books and over 200 articles for academic journals. 

Among them was the book ‘Who Wrote The Bhagavadgita?’, published in January 2014. According to HarperCollins, the publisher, Desai in his book contended “that some themes in the Gita reinforce social inequality and lack of concern for the other and to that extent he finds Gita to be toxic”.

Desai was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, in 2008.