Meghnad Desai was associated for 38 years with the London School of Economics (LSE) where he was Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance. He retired as Emeritus Professor of Economics and was made Honorary Fellow of the LSE. He joined the British Labour Party in 1971 and was elevated to the House of Lords in June 1991. He was Chairman of the Gandhi Memorial Statue Trust which helped erect the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in London’s Parliament Square. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Desai in 1991, received the Pravasi Bharatiya Puraskar in 2004 and the Padma Bhushan in 2008.