Daleep Mukarji was born in Lahore India before the country was partitioned and grew up in India having studied medicine at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, South India.

He came to London to study Tropical Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM 1974) and then did an MSc in Social Planning for Developing Countries at the London School of Economics (LSE 1975) before returning to India to start a rural community health and development programme for the medical college at Vellore in 1977. He was Director of this programme there till 1985 when he moved to the Christian Medical Association of India (the medical wing of the National Council of Churches in India) as their General Secretary. Here he was leader of the staff team that advised and supported the health and medical work of the churches in India that covered two medical colleges and over three hundred hospitals and three thousand health workers.

In 1994 Daleep moved to Geneva, Switzerland, to work with the World Council of Churches as the Executive Secretary for Health, Community and Justice which involved equipping and supporting the churches in their health and healing ministries and responding to issues of justice, inclusion and community development.

In 1998 he was invited to be Director of Christian Aid, the relief and development agency of the British and Irish churches, which works with and through partners in about fifty countries on poverty eradication and social justice. At Christian Aid he helped establish this organisation to be a leading agency in campaigning for justice and social change and to be the largest British development agency that worked only with partners overseas. In 2010 when he retired the total income was over £104 million.

Daleep was chair of the Board of Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK’s leading think tank on international development and humanitarian issues (2010-2012) and is now chair of the Board of Y Care International (the relief and development agency of the YMCA movement in Britain), He is a member of the governing bodies of London Metropolitan University and London School of Economics. He chairs the MMS Working Group of the Methodist Church of Britain and was chair of the Lay Leadership Strategy Group of the London District of the church. Daleep is also Patron of the Friends of the Churches in India and was a member of the BBC Charity Appeals Advisory Committee (2008-2012)

He was appointed OBE in 2008 and has received honorary awards from University of Aberdeen (Doctor of Laws 2006) and Roehampton University (Doctor of Laws 2009). In 2005 he was selected as one of the 100 most influential Asians in Britain. He lives in north London where he has retired.