• Lord Meghnad Desai, a renowned British Indian economist and House of Lords peer, passed away on July 29. He was 85.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi led tributes to the Gujarat-born parliamentarian and thinker, who played a prominent role in deepening India-UK relations.

• He was awarded the Bharatiya Pravasi Puraskar in 2004 and the Padma Bhushan in 2008.

Who was Meghnad Desai?

• Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai was born on July 10, 1940 in Vadodara.

• Desai taught economics from 1965 to 2003 at the London School of Economics (LSE) and went on to become Emeritus Professor of Economics at the institution. 

• In 1992, he established the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the LSE and was also the director and founding member of the LSE’s Development Studies Institute. 

• He joined the Labour Party in 1971 and was elevated to the House of Lords in June 1991 as Lord Desai of St Clement Danes. 

• The House of Lords is the upper chamber of Great Britain’s bicameral legislature. 

• As founder-trustee of the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, Desai worked to raise funds for a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which was inaugurated by then Prime Minister David Cameron at Parliament Square in London in 2015.

• He later resigned from the party in 2020.

• Desai was also an author of several books, including ‘Nehru’s Hero Dilip Kumar In The Life Of India’, the biography of the star whom he dubbed the greatest actor not just in Hindi cinema but on a global scale. 

• For decades, he was central to the UK-India relationship, with many initiatives that exist today owing much to his vision and leadership.

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