Exclusive! The PM Must Wake Up...

...and see that what worked for Gujarat can work also for India

- Lavina Melwani

When Jagdish N. Bhagwati speaks, people listen, be it about the future of a country’s economy or something as mundane as the price of eggs. His words carry weight. So it is hard to believe that this scholar, author and free trade theorist could once upon a time speak no English and knew only Gujarati. Growing up in a vegetarian family, he had never seen an egg, let alone tasted one. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as brown eggs until I came to London,” he jokes, with a chuckle.

In a rich career of five decades he has circled the globe and made his mark on varied fields from economics to immigration, law to political science.

“He is widely regarded as the intellectual father of the Indian economic reforms that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh brilliantly initiated and led, transforming India from a lagging performer with abysmal growth rates into a rapidly growing force on the world stage,” noted Columbia Law School when it established the Jagdish Bhagwati Chair in Indian Political Economy. Bhagwati is probably the only professor in American academia to have a chair named after him while he is still teaching at the university.

A University Professor (economics, law and international affairs) at Columbia University, he is married to Padma Desai, herself a noted economist. She is professor of comparative economic systems emerita and a specialist in the Russian economy.

They have donated millions of dollars to Columbia and other universities.

Bhagwati, 85, is a thought leader who astutely maps out emerging trends in globalisation, free trade and immigration. He has been an adviser to the UN and WTO, has published hundreds of articles and books, and has received 18 honorary degrees.