Kalidas Desai

KALIDAS DESAI, born in a farming family of modest means in a village in Gujarat state, studied at Bombay’s celebrated Elphinstone College on a scholarship. He started teaching English literature in Surat at the M.T.B. College, which was managed by the philanthropic Savarjanik Education Society that sent him to Cambridge in 1926. He later served as the principal of the college.
PADMA DESAI is the Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems at Columbia University, New York. A leading scholar on the Russian economy, her publications include Conversations on Russia: From Yeltsin to Putin (2006), which was the Financial Times’ Pick of the Year in 2007, and From Financial Crisis to Global Recovery (2011). Her memoirs,Breaking Out: An Indian Woman’s American Journey, were published by Penguin/Viking in 2012, and subsequently brought out by the MIT Press. Her awards include the Padma Bhushan and an honorary doctorate from Middlebury College, USA. She is married to the economist Jagdish Bhagwati.