Minhas was born in Punjab, British India, and obtained his first degree of BSc (agriculture) from Khalsa College, Amritsar, and a Master's degree in economics from Punjab University.
Minhas worked as a Consultant to the World Bank at Washington D.C. and the Statistics and Survey Division of the Food and Agricultural Organization (Rome).
In 1976–78, he worked as a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in the UK and, a little later, he held appointments as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University and as Rufus Putnam Visiting Professor at Ohio.
[1] Minhas was a co-author of a pioneering article deriving the constant elasticity of substitution production function and demonstrating its econometric uses.
Future Nobel Memorial Prize laureates Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow were co-authors.