Meghnad Desai, Baron Desai

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Desai has been active in the British Labour Party, becoming chairman between 1986 and 1992, and was made Honorary Lifetime and President of Islington South and Finsbury Constituency Labour Party in London. He was created a life peer as Baron Desai, of St Clement Danes in the City of Westminster, on 5 June 1991. He was a member of Labour Friends of Israel. Desai quit his Labour Party membership of 49 years over antisemitism concerns in November 2020, following the readmission of former Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn as a member.

Academic career

Currently, Desai is chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) Advisory Board, an independent membership-driven research network. It focuses on global policy and investment themes for off the record public and private sector engagement and analysis. He is the current chairman of the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics, a post-graduation institute in Mumbai.

Previously, Desai has worked as an Associate Specialist in the Department of Agricultural Economics, University of California, Berkeley, California. He became a lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1965 and professor of economics in 1983. At the LSE, he taught econometrics, macroeconomics, Marxian economics and development economics over the years. From 1990 to 1995, he headed LSE’s Development Studies Institute and lead LSE Global Governance from 1992 to 2003.

Desai wrote his first book Marxian Economic Theory in 1973 followed by Applied Econometrics in 1976 and Marxian Economics, a revised edition of his 1973 book in 1979. He wrote Testing Monetarism, a critique of monetarism, in 1981.

In the 1970s, he taught an idiosyncratic version of economic principles to freshers at the LSE (starting with Piero Sraffa).

Desai has written extensively publishing over 200 articles in academic journals and had a regular column in the British radical weekly Tribune during 1985–1994, in the Indian business daily Business Standard (1995–2001) and in Indian Express and Financial Express. From 1984 to 1991, he was co-editor of the Journal of Applied Econometrics. A selection of his academic papers was published in two volumes as The Selected Essays of Meghnad Desai in 1995.

In 2002, Desai's book Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism stated that globalisation would tend toward the revival of socialism. Desai analyses some of Marx's lesser known writings and argues that his theories enhance our understanding of modern capitalism and globalization. His work was well received, with The Guardian stating 'If only socialists had studied Marx properly, they would have known all along that capitalism would triumph. Meghnad Desai gets behind the slogans in Marx's Revenge'.

Desai published a biography of Indian film star Dilip Kumar entitled Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the life of India (Roli, 2004). He has described the book as his "greatest achievement". Examining Kumar's films – some of which Desai has seen more than 15 times – he discovers parallels between the socio-political arena in India and its reflection on screen. He discusses issues as varied as censorship, the iconic values of Indian machismo, cultural identity and secularism, and analyses how the films portrayed a changing India at that time.

In 2003, Desai retired as Director of the Centre for the Study of global governance, which he founded in 1992 at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he is now professor emeritus. He was chairman of the Trustee's Board for Training for Life, Chairman of the Management Board of City Roads and on the Board of Tribune magazine. Lord Desai was also a founding member of the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN) at the LSE in 1990.

Desai retired from the LSE in 2003. Since then he has published Rethinking Islamism: Ideology of the New Terror (2006), The Route to All Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound (2007), a novel Dead on Time, (2009) and The Rediscovery of India (2009).

Lord Desai serves as the founder chairman of the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics in Mumbai (MDAE). MDAE offers a one-year post-graduate diploma in economics, offered jointly with Department of Economics (Autonomous), University of Mumbai. MDAE focuses on applied learning and case studies rather than on rote learning. Students will participate in workshops and seminars with top economics and finance professionals from around the world.

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