[2][1] She believed that economic theory should be based on concepts which can be observed and be amenable to measurement in reality.
[3] Bharadwaj was born on 21 August 1935 in Karwar, Karnataka, into a Konkani Saraswat Brahmin family.
[1] In 1952, after her father's death, the family moved to Mumbai, where Bharadwaj attended Ruia college and graduated with a first class degree in economics.
Bharadwaj was asked by the then editor Sachin Chaudhuri of Economic Weekly to review the book.
In 1961, Bharadwaj joined the Center for International Studies to work on problems of planning and development with critical perceptions.