Padma Desai

Padma Desai (born October 12, 1931) is an India-born, naturalized American, development economist and a Russia-specialist. She is the Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Comparative economic systems and director of the Center for Transition Economies (1999–present), at the Columbia University.
She was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2009.

Born and brought up in a traditional Gujarati Anavil Brahmin family in Surat, Gujarat.

She did her B.A. (Economics) in 1951 from the University of Mumbai, followed by an M.A. (Economics) also from the same university in 1953. Thereafter she completed her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1960.

Desai started her career at the Department of Economics, Harvard (1957-1959), after which she was associate professor of economics at Delhi School of Economics at University of Delhi, from 1959 to 1968.

In November 1992, she joined as the 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.

Later remained U.S. Treasury’s advisor to the Russian Finance Ministry in the summer of 1995. She was president of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies in 2001.

She published her memoir, Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey in 2012.

She is married to Jagdish Bhagwati, also an Indian-American economist and professor of economics and law at Columbia University, the couple have one daughter, Anuradha Kristina, Executive Director of Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), a voluntary organization working servicewomen in the U.S. military.