Delighted that work on poverty awarded: Abhijit
October 14, 2019 21:53
Indian-American MIT professor Abhijit Banerjee, who jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize with his wife Esther Duflo and Harvard professor Michael Kremer, on Monday said he is delighted that work focussed on the world's poorest people has been awarded the prestigious prize and it honours all the people working on the ground for poverty alleviation.
The prize 'reflects on the fact that somehow while we often pay lip service to the welfare of all, this is something that not always (is the) immediate focus of a prize like this,' Banerjee said in an interview to NobelPrize.org.
He said he is delighted that 'some attention was thrown this way'.
"Not that I think all the other things that they get prizes for aren't important. But it does make people who work in this area feel a little more enthused.
"Lots of people in this world, who do real things, not people like us, people who do real things, this is somewhat of a prize for all of them," he said.
Banerjee said he has learnt an 'enormous amount' from talking to people on the ground.
"The set of people I really owe enormous amount to is the people who are 'both the people with whom we work with, whose lives we study in many ways, but also the people who work with them."
Crediting NGOs like Pratham and Seva Mandir for the work they do at the grassroots level, he said he has learned a huge amount from these organisations.
"For example, my personal experience that these organisations that work on a very large scale with very poor people has certainly been very important for us."
He added that 'one should not have too much faith in one's own rationality and you should not have too much faith in the rationality of anybody else either'. -- PTI
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