Mumbai: Indian-American economist Abhijeet Banerjee has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics this year. Meanwhile, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) connection of the Nobel laureate is also in news because he was jailed in Tihar for 10 days while studying in JNU.
Actually JNUSU president was expelled from the campus, which was strongly opposed by many students including Nobel laureate Abhijeet Banerjee. Students gheroad the vice-chancellor in his house for expelling the president of the student union.
Abhijeet Banerjee married Arundhati Tuli, a lecturer of literature at MIT. Abhijeet and Arundhati both grew up together in Kolkata. He also had a son named Kabir Banerjee, who was born in 1991. Kabir died in March 2016. Abhijeet and Arundhati later divorced.
Later, Abhijeet married Professor Esther Duflo in MIT itself.
His parents Nirmala and Deepak Banerjee have been well-known economists of this country. His mother Nirmala was from Mumbai, while his father was from Kolkata.
Abhijit Banerjee, who also studied at Presidency University, Kolkata (BA Economics) and Harvard University (PhD), argued that the government action in both cases “endangered the safe space that universities have traditionally provided.”
Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize Monday for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.