PM Modi Congratulates Abhijit Banerjee For Nobel Win, Sitharaman Brings Up Their JNU Connection

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday congratulated Indian-American economist Abhijit Banerjee for winning the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer.

“Congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee on being conferred the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He has made notable contributions in the field of poverty alleviation,” Modi tweeted. The Prime Minister also congratulated Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for winning the top honour.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which hands out the award, said the trio's work had shown how poverty could be addressed by breaking it down into smaller and more precise questions in areas such as education and healthcare, making problems easier to solve.

It said the results of their studies and field experiments had ranged from helping millions of Indian schoolchildren with remedial tutoring to encouraging governments around the world to increase funding for preventative medicine.

Apart from PM Modi, President Ram Nath Kovind also congratulated Banerjee. "Congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer on winning “the Nobel prize” in economic Science “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. Their research has helped economists better understand how to fight poverty in India and the world," the President tweeted.

Born in Mumbai, the 58-year-old economist is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He studied at the University of Calcutta and Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University before receiving his PhD in 1988 from Harvard University. PTI NAB

Also an alumnus of the JNU, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman brought up this connection in her tweet congratulating Banerjee.