ABHIJIT BANERJEE: A NOBEL LAUREATE
The happiness of achieving something big always thrived us all. Here we are talking about the Indian American who recently won the prestigious Nobel Prize in economics for the remarkable work done on tackling global poverty. The laureate was born in 1961 in India. He completed his bachelor’s from presidency college, Kolkata in 1981. Then he went to Jawahar Lal University, New Delhi for his masters. In 1988 he completed his Ph.D. from prestigious Harvard University. He is currently working as Ford Foundation International Professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Art and Sciences in 2004. In the year 2003, he founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-Pal) along with her wife Duflo. Not only this he was a contributor in major social and economic platforms as he was the research associate of NBER, a research fellow in CERN, Winner of Infosys Prize. These were some of the various accomplishments by him.
He wrote a book poor economics which won the Goldman Sachs business book of the year award in the year 2011. He is also working on a book with his wife – Good economics for hard times: better answers to our biggest problems.
Abhijit Banerjee won the Nobel prize jointly with his wife Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. The laureate’s research has improved the ability to fight global poverty. In the span of 20 years, this experiment has helped in transforming developed economies.
Recently in an interview after winning the Nobel prize the Indian American commented on the condition of the Indian economy. He said that the economy is doing very said. He also said
“The data we can see between 2014 – 2015 and 2017 – 2018 the average consumption in urban and rural areas in India has gone down”
He also concerned about the government not relying on the statistics of international organizations not even the prominent and accurate ones. Apart from this, he said that the government has a large deficit but they are aiming to please the citizens by pretending to hold some monetary or budgetary targets.
Banerjee said to MIT news that it was wonderful to receive the award and he knows that no one gets this lucky many times in their lives. Apart from him Duflo, the youngest women to receive Nobel prize told MIT news that
“We are incredibly happy and humbled and we feel fortunate to see this kind of work being recognized. According to her, it is a collective work that took endless hours of work done by hundreds of researchers and staff members”
This news gave great inspiration to millions of people working day and night to do something out of the box and to curb problems affecting the world. This belief will work as a source of upliftment that whatever they are up to one day or later good things will be recognized.
Submitted by-
Bibhanshu Mishra
Student Reporter, INBA.