Utsa Patnaik

Who is Utsa Patnaik?

Utsa Patnaik is an Indian Marxist economist. She taught at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, from 1973 until her retirement in 2010.

Utsa Patnaik obtained her doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford, UK before returning to India to join JNU. Her main areas of research interest are the problems of transition from agriculture and peasant predominant societies to industrial society, both in a historical context and at present in relation to India; and questions relating to food security and poverty. These issues have been discussed in more than 110 papers published as chapters in books and in journals. She has authored several books, including Peasant Class Differentiation - A Study in Method, The Long Transition and The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays. A German translation of selections from the last book appeared in 2009. She has also edited and co-edited several volumes including Chains of Servitude - Bondage and Slavery in India, Agrarian Relations and Accumulation - the Mode of Production Debate in India, The Making of History - Essays presented to Irfan Habib and The Agrarian Question in Marx and his Successors in two volumes.