Lord Meghnad Desai Passes Away

On 29th July 2025, Lord Meghnad Desai, eminent economist, author, and UK House of Lords member, passed away at the age of 85, leaving behind an influential legacy in global academia, public life, and India-UK relations.

Born in 1940 in Vadodara, Gujarat, Meghnad Desai pursued his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in economics from the University of Mumbai before earning a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963.
He began teaching at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1965 and served there for nearly four decades, becoming Professor Emeritus in 2003 after a distinguished career in economic scholarship.
Lord Desai authored over 200 academic papers and eight books, including Marxian Economic Theory, Marx’s Revenge, The Rediscovery of India, and Who Wrote the Bhagavad Gita?, making critical contributions to the fields of Marxian economics, globalisation, and development studies.
In 1991, he became the first Indian-origin peer from the Labour Party to be appointed to the UK House of Lords, where he was widely respected for his independent views and fearless intellectual commentary.