Meeting with Banerjee extensive: PM
NEW DELHI: Nobel prize winner Abhijit Banerjee said in a press interaction on Tuesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi joked with him about the media’s attempts to have him make “antimodi” remarks when the two met for an interaction that the PM later described as “healthy and extensive”.
Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won the 2019 Nobel prize for economics last week for their pioneering research into determining what works and what does not in efforts to combat poverty, improve health and expand education programmes. He became the second person of Indian origin to win the Nobel Prize for economics after Amartya Sen in 1998. “Prime Minister Modi started by cracking a joke on how the media are trying to trap me into saying anti-modi things. He has been watching TV and he has been watching you guys. And he knows what you are trying to do,” Banerjee said after their meeting.
He declined to respond to queries on the government’s policies and the country’s economic situation. Modi tweeted soon after the meeting that India is proud of Banerjee’s accomplishments. “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 endeavours,” Modi wrote. Banerjee said that the PM spoke to him about his way of thinking about India, which he called “unique”.
Union minister Piyush Goyal triggered a row last week by suggesting that he did not take Banerjee’s criticism of India’s economic policies seriously because “his thinking is left-leaning; he heaped praise on the NYAY scheme [minimum income guarantee scheme in the 2019 Congress manifesto] but the people of India have totally rejected that thinking”. Banerjee said that Modi also talked about the way he sees governance, and how the mistrust of the people on the ground can colour governance.
“In that process, he explained how he is trying to reform the bureaucracy to make it more responsive to understand the ways in which people’s views need to be taken into account,” Banerjee said, adding that it was important for India to create a bureaucracy that gets its stimulus from how life on the ground is.
“Without that (a responsive bureaucracy), we get an unresponsive government. Thank you, Prime Minister, it was a unique experience for me,” Banerjee said. In his interaction with the media, Banerjee also expressed concerns about the banking crisis in India and called for aggressive changes to deal with the situation.