Kolkata/New Delhi: West Bengal received with pride Monday the news of Bengali origin Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee winning the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the Nobel ‘for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty’. Starting from family members to politicians and academia – all hailed Abhijit Banerjee’s achievement.
“Hearty congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee, alumnus of South Point School & Presidency College Kolkata, for winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. Another Bengali has done the nation proud. We are overjoyed,” West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in a tweet.
The chief minister’s tweet came on a day when Sourav Ganguly, another Bengal icon and former India skipper, was set to assume the reins of BCCI.
Abhijit Banerjee’s former professors at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he pursued his Masters in Economics, remembered him as among the ‘best’ students they had taught.
Professor Anjan Mukherjee, who taught Banerjee at the Centre For Economic Studies and Planning, said he has sent his former student a congratulatory email.
“I have sent him (Abhijit) an email. He was a very good student, among the best that we have taught. We always expected that he would go far and he did,” said professor Mukherjee.
“He has been at the forefront for many years. When his first book came out in 2008, that is the time when we thought that he would get the Nobel. We were all hoping that he would get it,” Mukherjee saud.
JNU vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar also expressed pride at Abhijit’s achievement. “Prof. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, a JNU alumnus (MA in Economics, 1983) wins Nobel Prize (together with two fellow economists) for contributing towards alleviating global poverty. JNU is proud of his achievement. Our alumni are torch bearers of JNU. We are proud of them,” tweeted Kumar.
Sharmila Dey Sarkar, who was Abhijit’s classmate at South Point school, remembers him as much for his ability to solve complex mathematical problems as for his sporting prowess.
“We were impressed with the way Abhijit used to solve mathmatical problems in the class. But beyond academics, he used to take great interest in sports and other activities. He loved to play football,” she said.
Dipali Sengupta, who taught Banerjee mathematics at school, said he was an ‘introvert, unassuming’ boy who finished his class work in a trice.
PTI