India, Aug. 4 -- Noted economist and Labour peer Meghnad Desai passed away recently. Few individuals command such universal recognition - his impact transcended not just borders but boundaries of language, discipline, and realm of thought.

For both of us, he embodied the ideal of the great teacher. We were from the first batch of Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics. Desai, in one of his lectures, quoted Keynes's description of a master economist: "A master economist.must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought."

Desai's style of teaching changed the way we engaged with ideas and understood the world.

We were in the i...