On the Need for Regulating Technological Change

1. It is a matter of great honour for me that I have been asked to deliver this lecture in memory of Professor J.K.Mehta as part of his centenary celebrations. Professor Mehta was a renowned economist. He was highly original and has been acclaimed by Professor Joan Robinson as one of the originators of the concept of "marginal revenue". He was a legend in his life-time and inspired deep affection, tinged with a sense of awe, among his students and contemporaries. This awe arose because of his remarkable personal integrity and frugal habits. Professor Mehta was a philosophically-inclined economist, who sought to express his own personal weltanschauung through a set of highly original economic doctrines. In particular he developed over the years his view that the unlimited generation and cultivation of wants stood in the way of human development.