Meghnad Desai, Baron Desai

Meghnad Desai, Baron Desai, in front of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) building

Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai, Baron Desai FRSA (born July 10, 1940 in Vadodara , Gujarat , India ) is a British agronomist , economist , university professor and politician of the Labor Party who has been a life peer member of the House of Lords since 1991 .

Life

University professor

After attending school, Desai completed a degree in agricultural and economic sciences at the University of Mumbai , from which he graduated in 1960 with a master's degree. He then completed postgraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania with financial support through a scholarship , where he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy ( Ph.D. ) in 1963 . He then was a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley between 1963 and 1965 . After entering Great Britain in 1965, he began working at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he was first a lecturer , then between 1977 and 1980 senior lecturer and from 1980 to 1983 reader. In 1983 he finally accepted a professorship for agricultural and economic sciences at the LSE and taught there until his retirement in 2003. In addition to this activity, he was also director of the institute for development studies there between 1990 and 1995 and director of the center for the studies of global governance .

In addition, Desai began his political engagement for the Labor Party in the mid-1980s and was chairman of the Labor Party in the constituency of Islington South and Finsbury between 1986 and 1992 . At the same time he acted from 1987 to 1990 as President of the Association of University Lecturers for Business.

House of Lords

Lord Desai at a conference with former US President Bill Clinton (December 13, 2001)

By a Letters Patent of 5 June 1991, Desai, the 1991-1992 Executive Committee member of the Fabian Society , the Council of 1991-1994 Royal Economic Society was when life peer with the title Baron Desai , of St Clement Danes in the City of Westminster, raised to the nobility . Shortly after its introduction was carried out ( Introduction ) as a member of the House of Lords .

During his long membership in the House of Lords Lord Desai between 1991 and 1994 was Parliamentary Secretary ( Whip ) of the opposition Labor faction and at the same time from 1991 to 1993 opposition spokesman on health and in 1992 and 1993 for the Treasury ( Treasury ) and economic affairs.

Lord Desai, who was a member of the Executive Committee of the UK Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) from 1995 to 2003 and also a member of the Executive Committee of the Marshall Aid Commission between 1998 and 2002, became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1991 and received honorary doctorates from Kingston University ( Hon. D.Sc., 1992), Middlesex University (1993), University of East London (1994), London Guildhall University (Hon. D. Phil., 1996) and Monash University (Hon. LL.D ., 2005).

In 2011 Lord Desai ran for the office of Lord Speakers , but in the first three ballots he only took third place among the five candidates with 78, 79 and 92 votes and withdrew his candidacy for the fourth ballot. Ultimately became the fifth ballot with 296 votes to the CROSSBENCHER belonging Frances D'Souza selected, so just to be Anthony Hamilton-Smith, 3rd Baron Colwyn from the Conservative Party was able to prevail, who received 285 votes.

Publications

In his numerous publications, Lord Desai, who is married to the writer and Costa Book Award winner Kishwar Desai , dealt not only with economic policy issues such as Marxist economic theory , but also with his Indian homeland and personalities such as the actor Dilip Kumar . His most famous books include:

• Marxian Economic Theory (1974)
• Applied Econometrics (1976)
• Marxian Economics (1979)
• Testing Monetarism (1981)
• Cambridge Economic History of India , 2 volumes (Associate Editor, 1983)
• Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia (Associate Editor, 1984)
• Lectures on Advanced Econometric Theory (Editor, 1988)
• Lenin's Economic Writings (Editor, 1989)
• Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (2002)
• Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India 1944-1964 (2004)
• Development and Nationhood: Essays in the Political Economy of South Asia (2004)
• Why is India a Democracy (2005)
• The Route of All Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound (2006)
• Rethinking Islamism

Web links

• Entry on Parliament's homepage (accessed on November 5, 2012)
• Meghnad Desai at Hansard (English)
• Entry in They Work For You (accessed November 5, 2012)
• Biography in Debrett's (accessed November 5, 2012)
• Bibliography ( Open Library )