Manoranjan Mohanty was a Professor of Political Science and Director, Developing Countries Research Centre at University of Delhi where he taught Comparative Politics, Chinese Politics and Research Methodology. Currently he is a Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi (www.csdindia.org) where until recently he edited the CSD-Sage journal Social Change.
He is a social scientist, China scholar and a peace and human rights activist with research interest in the study of Political Economy of China, India and global transformation. He is an Emeritus Fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies, (www.icsin.org), its founding member and former Chairperson. He is also the Emeritus Chairperson, Development Research Institute, Bhubaneswar, the research wing of Gabeshana Chakra (www.gabeshanachakra.org) of which he was the founder-president.
He has had academic assignments in many institutions abroad including in California, Beijing, Moscow, Lagos, Copenhagen and Oxford. He has done extensive research on modern China and India including on the Chinese Revolution, the Political Economy of China, People’s Movements in India and Poverty in Odisha.
He has authored, among others, The Political Philosophy of Mao Zedong (1978, 2009, Hindi edition 1979, 2010)); Red and Green: Five Decades of the Maoist Movement in India (2014 incorporating Revolutionary Violence published in 1977); Contemporary Indian Political Theory (2000); Ideology Matters: China from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping (2016, Hindi edition 2021) . His publication based on a thirty-year study of China’s reforms with focus on Wuxi is China’s Transformation: The Success Story and the Success Trap (Sage: 2018), Hindi edition Cheen ka Kayapalat (Sage Bhasha,2020).
He has been a part of a number of national and international research projects and academic initiatives leading to research papers and edited or coauthored volumes such as Chinese Revolution: Comparative Perspectives (1993); People’s Rights: Social Movements and the State in the Third World (1998); Class, Caste and Gender (2004); Grass-roots Democracy in India and China (2007); Weapon of the Oppressed: An Inventory of People’s Rights in India (2009); India: Social Development Report 2010 (2010); A Fistful of Dry Rice: Land, Equity and Democracy: Essays in Honour of D Bandyopadhyay (2012); Building a Just World: Essays in Honour of Muchkund Dubey (2015); Exploring Emerging Global Thresholds: Towards 2030 (2017); China at a Turning Point: Perspectives after the Nineteenth Party Congress
(2019); and Migration, Workers and Fundamental Freedoms: Pandemic Vulnerabilities and States of Exception in India (2021).
He has contributed to many Handbooks and Encyclopaedias the latest being the essay, Inequality: Perspective from the Global South in Oxford Handbook of Global Studies (2020).
He has published books and articles in Odia as well.
He has been an active member of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi since its inception and also of Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy. He is part of the Bandung Spirit Network (www.bandungspirit.org) and a founding member of the Global University of Sustainability (http//:our-global-u.org).