The year that has recently passed by, 2019, has ended with a very positive note for India and specially the Indian academic society. The good news came all the way from Stockholm in the month of October that another son of the soil, Dr. Abhijit Banerjee has been selected for the Nobel Prize in Economics. He shared the prize with his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. Their work in the field of development economics to reduce global poverty brought them this honour. Presently, Dr. Banerjee is serving as the Ford Foundation International Professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his wife is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the same institute.
Abhijit Banerjee was born on 21st February 1961 in Mumbai. Both of his parents were professors of economics. His father, Dipak Banerjee was the Head of the Department of Economics at Presidency College, Calcutta and mother, Nirmala Banerjee was a professor of economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Dipak Banerjee had a PhD in economics from London School of Economics. Young Abhijit completed his school education from South Point High School in Calcutta. After schooling, he got his BSc degree with honours in Economics from Presidency College in the year 1981. He did his M.A in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi in 1983 and moved to Harvard University for Ph.D. He completed his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1988. The title of his thesis was “Essays in Information Economics”.
Throughout his career as an Economist, Abhijit Banerjee gathered many accolades and achieved professional excellence. His main area of work is Development Economics. His present wife Esther Duflo is also working in the same area. Abhijit Banerjee, before being selected for Nobel Prize last year, was also the recipient of a number of other coveted recognitions, some of which are: Infosys Prize 2009 in the social sciences category of economics, Gerald Loeb Award 2012 for his book ‘Poor Economics’, co-authored with his wife Esther, and Bernhard-Harms-Prize 2014 from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
For work on development economics and in recognition of his efforts to reduce global poverty, Dr. Banerjee was finally chosen for the coveted Nobel Prize. The way he reacted when he got the news of being selected for the Nobel is very interesting; probably also unique and funny. I am going to place before you the sequences of events that took place on that day.
In the early morning of October 14, 2019, when he was still in the bed, he received a call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm informing him regarding the decision of the Academy. He politely thanked the man on the other side and then simply went back to the bed again. Later, in an interview when he was asked about it, he answered, “Yeah, I mean, it was early, very early in the morning. I’m not an early morning person. I figured it would be a fault of the system, if I don’t continue my sleep”.
Next, the interviewer asked again “Did you manage to sleep?” He answered, “Yeah. Not for long, as I kept getting calls after a while. Once the press conference happened and news spread to India and Europe, I think, I had no chance. But I had a 40 minute interim period when I slept”.
