"Sa jivati mano yasya mananena hi jivati" (From Verse 1.14.11 of Yoga Vashisht)

: One lives as a "human being", only when one uses one's mind. 

I obtained a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Minnesota in 1986. I retired on superannuation from PD Energy University (PDEU) on June 5, 2022 as Professor of Economics and Operations Research. My current research interests are in linear programming, decision theory and finite mathematics. 

On October 12, 1987, I was privileged to tie the knot with Dr. (Ms.) Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri (June 23, 1959 to August 3, 2014), whose scholarship and academic achievements outshines my own, by leaps and bounds (https://www.iitk.ac.in/hss/data/Lecture.pdf). This is what tying the knot meant and means to us: (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6cQdMY8iA). In retrospect, a very important life-lesson that I learnt from simple souls like her and my mother, is that just because a thing is "hard to get", does not necessarily mean it is a "good" (except in the hedonistic sense of the term) thing. For instance "narcotics" may be "hard to get" for someone who does not know how to deal with the "appropriate" kind of agents or middlemen (middle-women?). I hope most of those who read this page, will agree with me, that "narcotics" are not "good". 

I strongly believe that academics is not a "PR job", and am often saddened the way the commercialization of education is diluting (if not distorting!) the academic content that is on offer in (so called) academic institutions these days. An appropriate description for such institutions would very likely be "goddalika probahos". I sincerely hope that providers of education will learn to distinguish between "honest business" that does not compromise on the quality of the product that they offer at a fair price and "profiteering"- the latter being nothing but a manifestation of greed often combined with self-delusion. Looking back at my years in academia (till date), I feel that there have been several occasions when I could have been "wiser".   

I consider myself to be a humanist. Humanism appears to be the required world-view today. To me humanism means the following: motivated by Compassion, inspired by Atma or Art, guided by Reason and informed by Experience (CARE). Today the world desperately wants to hear being told, with sincerity and a sense of purpose: "Yes, we CARE!"