Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai, Baron Desai is a British economist and Labour politician. He stood unsuccessfully for the position of Lord Speaker in the British House of Lords in 2011, the first ever non-UK born candidate to do so. He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India, in 2008. Currently, he is chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) Advisory Board, an independent membership-driven research network. He has been active in the British Labour Party, becoming chairman between 1986 and 1992, and was made Honorary Lifetime and President of Islington South and Finsbury Constituency Labour Party in London. He was made a life peer as Baron Desai, of St Clement Danes in the City of Westminster, in April 1991. Desai retired from the London School of Economics in 2003. Since then he has published many books.