Banerjee attended secondary school at South Point School in Kolkata, where he was described as a "brilliant" but "very quiet" student.[12] During high school, he was interested in literature, history, philosophy, and mathematics, choosing to pursue his undergraduate studies in the latter at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.[1] He dropped out of the program after one week, transferring to Presidency College, then an affiliate of the University of Calcutta, to study economics.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Banerjee pursued an MA in Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, selecting to study there over the Delhi School of Economics because of its political life, and the latter's reputation as a stepping stone to PhD programs in the United States, which Banerjee had little interest in pursuing.[1] His teachers included Anjan Mukherjee and Krishna Bharadwaj, the latter of whom taught a course on the history of economic thought.[1] While studying at JNU, Banerjee was arrested, imprisoned, and beaten at Tihar Jail, in response to a protest in which students gheraoed the then vice chancellor of the university.[13][14] He completed his degree in 1983, and was encouraged by his parents and teachers to apply for PhD programs in economics.[1]
In 2013, he was named by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to a panel of experts tasked with updating the Millennium Development Goals after 2015 (their expiration date).[21]
In 2019, he delivered Export-Import Bank of India's 34th Commencement Day Annual Lecture on Redesigning Social Policy.[23]
In 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, together with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".[24]
Research and work in India
Banerjee and his co-workers try to measure the effectiveness of actions (such as government programmes) in improving people's lives. For this, they use randomized controlled trials, similar to clinical trials in medical research.[25] For example, although polio vaccination is freely available in India, many mothers were not bringing their children for the vaccination drives. Banerjee and Prof. Esther Duflo, also from MIT, tried an experiment in Rajasthan, where they gave a bag of pulses to mothers who vaccinated their children. Soon, the immunization rate went up in the region. In another experiment, they found that learning outcomes improved in schools that were provided with teaching assistants to help students with special needs.[26]
Abhijit Banerjee was married to Dr. Arundhati Tuli Banerjee, a lecturer of literature at MIT.[30][31] Abhijit and Arundhati had one son together and later divorced.[30] Their son, born in 1991, died in an accident in 2016.[32]
In 2015, Banerjee married his co-researcher, MIT professor Esther Duflo; they have two children.[33][34] Banerjee was a joint supervisor of Duflo's PhD in economics at MIT in 1999.[33][35] Duflo is also a professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT.[36]
"Banerjee, Duflo and their co-authors concluded that students appeared to learn nothing from additional days at school. Neither did spending on textbooks seem to boost learning, even though the schools in Kenya lacked many essential inputs. Moreover, in the Indian context Banerjee and Duflo intended to study, many children appeared to learn little: in results from field tests in the city of Vadodara fewer than one in five third-grade students could correctly answer first-grade curriculum math test questions.[39]
"In response to such findings, Banerjee, Duflo and co-authors argued that efforts to get more children into school must be complemented by reforms to improve school quality."[39]
The Nobel Prize was a major recognition for their chosen field - Development Economics, and for the use of Randomised Controlled Trials. It evoked mixed emotions in India, where his success was celebrated with nationalistic fervour while his approach and pro-poor focus were seen as a negation of India's current government's right-wing ideology as well as broader development discourse.[40]
Banerjee's achievement of the Nobel Prize was received with a cold shoulder by the Hindu-right wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power at the Union level in India, because of his political activism as a member of Communist students' bodies in the JNU, & the fact he was one of the economists that were consulted by Rahul Gandhi in formulating the basic-income support scheme called NYAY, which was the main electoral promise of the Indian National Congress in the 2019 Indian general election. In response to his criticism of the Union government's handling of the country's economy, Commerce & Industries MinisterPiyush Goyal, while speaking on Banerjee's receiving of the Nobel Prize in Twitter, stated that Banerjee's economic theories are based on a leftist viewpoint & by voting for the BJP, the Indian masses have 'totally rejected' his thoughts.[41] BJP leader Rahul Sinha, who had served as the state BJP president in Banerjee's native state of West Bengal, downplayed his achievements & alleged anti-Hindu bias on the part of the Nobel Committee for awarding Banerjee, who in spite of being born to a Brahmin family had married a non-Hindu person, over other Hindu academicians who adhered to Hindu norms of hierarchy.[42]