Padma Desai
Desai in 2015
Born	(1931-10-12)October 12, 1931 Surat,Bombay Presidency, British India
Died	April 29, 2023(2023-04-29) (aged 91)
Citizenship	India United States
Spouse	Jagdish Bhagwati
Children	1
Awards	Padma Bhushan (2009)
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Mumbai (BA, MA) Harvard University (PhD)
Influences	Alexander Gerschenkron Robert Solow
Academic work
Discipline	Development economics
Institutions	Columbia University (1992–2023)

Padma Desai (October 12, 1931 – April 29, 2023) was an Indian-Americandevelopment economist who was the Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor ofcomparative economic systems and director of the Center for Transition Economies atColumbia University. Known for her scholarship on Soviet and Indianindustrial policy, she was awarded thePadma Bhushan in 2009.

Desai was born inSurat, Bombay Presidency, British India, on October 12, 1931,^[1] into a GujaratiAnavil Brahmin family. Her parents, Shanta and Kalidas, were literature professors who were educated at the University of Cambridge.^[2] She had three siblings.^[2]

Desai completed her B.A. (Economics) in 1951 from theUniversity of Mumbai, followed by an M.A. (Economics) also from the same university in 1953. Thereafter, she completed her Ph.D. fromHarvard in 1960.^[3] AtHarvard University, she was influenced by economistsAlexander Gerschenkron andRobert Solow.^[2] She was a fellow of theAmerican Association of University Women while pursuing her Ph.D. at Harvard.^[4]

Desai started her career at the Department of Economics, Harvard (1957–1959), after which she was associate professor of economics atDelhi School of Economics atUniversity of Delhi, from 1959 to 1968.^[3]

Desai's 1968 bookIndia: Planning for Industrialization, which was co-written with her future husband and economistJagdish Bhagwati was an influential critique of India's industrial planning system.^[2] The work influenced subsequenteconomic liberalisation in India.^[2] The book spoke against thelicence regime and thecommand economic policies that were prevalent in India at the time.^[2]

Desai joined Columbia University as a professor of economics in 1980.^[2] In November 1992, she became Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems at Columbia University and went on to become the director of the Center for Transition Economies at the university.^[3][5]

Desai's research included studying theSoviet economy, specifically studying thecommand economies and the misallocation of resources therein. She built on the studies of economistsAlexander Gerschenkron andRobert Solow, studying the decelerating growth rates in the Soviet economies, separating the contributions from technology led productivity gains and capital led growth. In her bookPerestroika in Progress (1989) she studied the misallocation of resources in command economies and the resulting damages and losses across sectors.^[2] She continued to study the Russian economy after theSoviet dissolution and trained US policymakers and continued to speak on Russian economic policies.^[2] She was theU.S. Treasury's advisor to theRussian Finance Ministry in the summer of 1995.^[6]

Desai was president of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies in 2001.^[6] She was awarded thePadma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honor, by theGovernment of India in 2009.^[7]

Desai published her memoir,Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey in 2012.^[8] The book spoke about her journey from India to America, breaking out of an emotionally abusive marriage, and establishing herself as an economist studying many shacked economies.^[2]

Desai was married toJagdish Bhagwati, also an Indian-American economist and professor of economics and law at Columbia University; the couple had one daughter. She first befriended him in 1956.^[2] They were both faculty members at the Delhi School of Economics in the 1960s.^[2] The two attempted to get married but restrictive divorce laws in India prevented Desai from divorcing her first husband until 1969 when she converted to Christianity (religious conversion was grounds for divorce in India).^[2] Bhagwati and Desai married in Mexico.^[2]

Desai died on April 29, 2023, at age 91.^[9][10]

• Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey. Viking, 2012.ISBN 9780670085781.
• From Financial Crisis to Global Recovery. HarperCollins, 2012.ISBN 9789350295823.
• Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin. Oxford University Press, 2006.ISBN 9780195300611.
• Financial Crisis, Contagion, and Containment: From Asia to Argentina. Princeton University Press, 2003.ISBN 9780691113920.
• Work Without Wages: Russia's Non-Payment Crisis, with Todd Idson. MIT Press, 2001.ISBN 9780262041843.
• Going Global: Transition from Plan to Market in the World Economy, Editor. MIT Press, 1997.ISBN 9780262041614.
• The Soviet Economy: Problems and Prospects. Blackwell, 1990.ISBN 9780631171836
• Perestroika in Perspective: The Design and Dilemmas of Soviet Reform. I B Tauris & Co, 1989.ISBN 9781850431411.
• Bokaro Steel Plant: A Study of Soviet Economic Assistance. North-Holland, 1972.ISBN 9780720430653.
• India: Planning for Industrialization (with Jagdish Bhagwati). 1968.ISBN 9780192153340

• Celebrating Padma Desai –Columbia University

• Padma Desai homepage atColumbia University
• Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee (June 23, 2012)."The Examined Life".Tehelka. Vol. 9, no. 25. Archived fromthe original on October 29, 2012.

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