I was born at Klari, my ancestral village in Kerala, India in 1955. I began schooling in Moscow and attended universities at Madras and New Delhi before training as an economist at Oxford and Cambridge. My published work spans the inflationary process, the measurement of productivity, the transition to a market economy in post-communist Europe, agricultural decline in Kerala and economic growth in India. Though I am published in the profession's journals, I am perhaps better known for my books 'Pricing and Inflation in India' (OUP India, 1991), 'Economic Growth in India: History and Prospect' (OUP India, 2010) and 'India's Economy  from Nehru to Modi: A brief history' (Permanent Black in association with Ashoka University, 2022). I have held appointments at Oxford University, the Indian Statistical Institute at Delhi and the Indian Institute of Management at Kozhikode. I have served as Country Economist for Ukraine at the World Bank and as a consultant to the ILO, RBI and UNDP. Since 2015, I  have been Professor of Economics at Ashoka University. Through my popular writing, I have for over three decades by now aimed to enhance the public understanding of the Indian economy. In 2014, I received the Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contribution to Development Studies.