On Tuesday, Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee met PM Modi. Banerjee's Nobel had been derided by some members of the ruling dispensation including Piyush Goyal, who branded him leftist.
PM Modi termed the meeting excellent and wrote on Twitter: “Excellent meeting with Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee. His passion towards human empowerment is clearly visible. We had a healthy and extensive interaction on various subjects. India is proud of his accomplishments. Wishing him the very best for his future endeavour.”
Abhijit Banerjee on his part said it was a privilege to meet the PM and said he got some exciting insights behind the policies of the current government. He said while one often saw the policies, one rarely got to hear the rationale behind such moves.
He called the PM kind for giving him a lot of time and he explained his efforts to reform the bureaucracy.
Abhijit explained that that PM was trying to reform the bureaucracy and explain to ensure they had their ears closer to the ground, to understand how real India lives.
He also told news agency ANI: “Prime Minister started by cracking a joke about how the media is trying to trap me into saying anti-Modi things. He has been watching TV, he has been watching you guys, he knows what you are trying to do.”
Many denizens of BJP didn’t take too kindly to Abhijit Nobel prize.
Tamil Nadu’s BJP spokesperson went out of his way to argue that there was no actual Nobel Prize in Economics while Piyush Goyal branded him ‘Left-leaning’, even as he took a break from ranting about e-commerce sites giving huge discounts for Diwali, as most right-wing governments are wont to do.
Banerjee has also been a vocal critic of the government, signing a letter alleging political in statistical data in India and famously said ‘he never understood the logic’.
Banerjee, an Indian-origin economist and an academic professor, was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences along with his French-American wife Esther Duflo and American economist Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." The 58-year-old Kolkata-born economist is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
(With inputs from Agencies)
