Abhijit Banerjee: Nobel Laureate, Economics Writer, Director...And Cook!

Indian-born development economist Abhijit Banerjee, along with fellow peers Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their research on poverty alleviation and income inequality.

Banerjee, 58, was born in Mumbai. He studied at the University of Calcutta and the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Banerjee then went on to receive his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1988.

A renowned name in developmental economics, Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan and serves as one of its directors.

Married To A Nobel Winner

Banerjee is married to Duflo, with whom he is sharing the Nobel prize. French-American Duflo is also the youngest person and only the second woman to be awarded the prestigious award for economics.

The duo, both MIT professors, have worked together on a number of research papers including a landmark study on remedial tutoring which has directly benefitted millions of Indian children.

The two have been colleagues since Duflo arrived from France to MIT. Banerjee was one of her Ph.D. supervisors before she became a professor. In 2003, they co-founded J-PAL.

They have a child together.

Banerjee was earlier married to Arundhati Tuli Banerjee, a lecturer of literature at MIT, with whom he has a child too.

Writing Books Together

Banerjee has co-authored two books with Duflo: Poor Economics (2011) and the upcoming Good Economics in Hard Times.

He has also co-authored five other books.

Poor Economics was extremely well received for its accessibility and evidence-based approach towards understanding poverty. Critics were particularly impressed by how the book was contextualised with real stories of real people. The book won the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Banerjee Behind The Camera

The economist has also donned the director’s hat twice. Banerjee has co-directed two documentaries:

• The Name of the Disease (2006)
• The Magnificent Journey: Times and Tales of Democracy (2019)

The Name of the Disease, which explored healthcare in rural India, was attempted to understand the complex narratives of being poor and sick.

More recently, The Magnificent Journey: Times and Tales of Democracy, was released ahead of the general elections of 2019. The documentary saw Banerjee and co-director Ranu Ghosh interview first-time voters and local leaders in towns and villages of north India. The documentary emphasised on the enormous challenge in a democracy of making the right choice in an election.

Cabinet Full Of Honours

Banerjee has been awarded more than three dozen fellowships and honours. He was elected as a fellow of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. He has also won the Infosys Social Sciences Prize in 2009.

In 2013, Banerjee was part of an expert panel of the United Nations tasked with updating the Millennium Development Goals.

For J-PAL, Banerjee has won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge for Development Cooperation in 2009. He was also named among Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2011 by the Foreign Policy magazine.

Beyond Economics: Food, Adda And Heroes

Banerjee is a self-proclaimed serious cook. In an interview with Telegraph India, he said that he cooks something almost everyday.

“I have had this interest in cooking since childhood and I think the environment at home played a role in it,” Banerjee said. “I grew up in an environment where people—especially my aunts—could constantly talk about food.”

Besides food, Banerjee is fond of adda—the name given to an informal intellectual dialogue, prominent in Bengali culture. “I think the extent to which I indulge in adda is much more than most of the people around me,” he said.

Banerjee also stated that the two unsung Bengali heroes he worships are applied statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobois and writer Buddhadeva Bose.

Schooling Outside Schools

Banerjee and Duflo worked on a study on remedial tutoring which the MIT said has helped over 5 million Indian children.

The researchers, in conjunction with an NGO Pratham, evaluated the Balsakhi Program, an education intervention that was implemented in 122 public primary schools in Vadodara and 77 schools in Mumbai.

The intervention involved a tutor (balsakhi), recruited from the local community, working with children weaker in studies in grades 2, 3 and 4. The balsakhi took these children outside the regular classroom in a separate class for two hours out of the four-hour school day. The instructors then helped the children with basic numeracy and literacy skills.

Missing Rice And Postcards

In 2012, Banerjee and a group of colleagues helped the Indonesian government plug leakages in their ambitious Raskin, or Rice for the Poor, scheme.

The scheme was set up to provide subsidised rice each month to the country’s most vulnerable households. Low income families were supposed to get 15 kilograms of rice every month at roughly $0.15 per kg, one-fifth of what the market price was.

However, officials were distributing rice to residents who were not on the government’s lists. Other officials were also setting subsidy prices on their own. This meant the intended benefit of Raskin was not reaching the country’s poorest citizens.

Banerjee and his colleagues solved the problem. Not by tinkering with bureaucratic policies, but with something as trivial as a postcard. They sent hundreds of thousands of postcards to the intended beneficiaries of Raskin. The cards stated explicitly that the person was eligible for the program and exactly how much rice at what price were they supposed to get.

The result: just by sending cards, eligible beneficiaries received 26 percent more rice than earlier.

Strategy For India, Concern For Economic Data And ‘NYAY’

In the last two years, Banerjee has very actively expressed his views on the Indian economy.

Two key things stand out. In 2019, Banerjee was among the 108 economists and social scientists that signed a joint statement expressing concern over political interference in data estimation in the country. Later, in an interview with Indiaspend, Banerjee said that it was a tragedy that India’s statistics “have lost so much credibility”.

Last year, Banerjee was also among 13 eminent economists, including Raghuram Rajan and Gita Gopinath, who outlined an economic strategy for India. Banerjee authored the chapter on healthcare suggesting an expansion of the public health outreach efforts to include private sector providers and build second-district hospitals in every district headquarter outside the state capital.

The strategy was later published as a book titled What The Economy Needs Now.

Banerjee was also among the economists consulted by the Indian National Congress to formulate NYAY, a proposed minimum income guarantee programme for poverty alleviation. While Banerjee thought financial viability of such a scheme is an issue, he said that it can be partly addressed by increasing tax income, including through some version of a wealth tax.