About Dr. Faqir Singh Bagi

Dr. Faqir Singh Bagi is an economist, researcher, educator, author, and public thinker whose work focuses on the long-term survival and flourishing of human civilization.

Born in India, Dr. Bagi earned a B.S. in Agricultural Sciences and an M.S. in Agricultural Economics and Sociology from Punjab Agricultural University. He later completed his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at The Ohio State University in 1975.

His career spans more than forty years, encompassing teaching, research, public policy, and government work. He has worked with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, taught and conducted research at Tennessee State University, served as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and later became an associate professor at North Carolina A&T State University.

Dr. Bagi then entered federal service as an Economist with the U.S. Department of State, where he analyzed national economies worldwide using United Nations data. In 1992, he joined the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he served until his retirement in 2016. His work included research on agricultural, rural, and public policies, including analysis of the economic effects of federal spending programs across all 3,143 U.S. counties and territories.

Throughout his career, Dr. Bagi published approximately 60 professional papers and presented at about 60 conferences. His work gradually expanded from households, farms, and rural communities to counties, states, nations, global systems, and ultimately civilization itself.

Alongside his professional career, Dr. Bagi pursued more than five decades of interdisciplinary study in economics, philosophy, history, environmental stewardship, governance, psychology, science, technology, and the rise and fall of civilizations.

One question increasingly shaped his life’s work: What allows human beings, societies, and civilizations to flourish?

That question eventually expanded into a larger civilizational question: How can humanity become wise enough to guide the immense powers it has acquired?

His forthcoming book, A World Worth Building: How Humanity Can Flourish for Generations to Come, is the culmination of this lifelong inquiry. The book explores how humanity might build a wiser, more humane, more democratic, more sustainable, and more flourishing civilization for future generations.

Dr. Bagi is also developing a broader body of work on character, family, emotional intelligence, stewardship, and human flourishing, including The Language of the Heart, Family: The Roots of Civilization, and Character in Action.

His central conviction is simple: Human beings can become better than they are. Therefore, civilization can become better than it is now.