Nobel Prize winner Abhijit Banerjee a product of India's educational system, says Raghuram Rajan

Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan Monday congratulated Abhijit Banerjee and other Nobel Prize winners in Economics. Rajan in his post on LinkedIn highlighted that it is a proud moment for India as Banerjee was largely educated in the country.

"Congratulations to this year's Nobel Laureates in Economic Sciences. The collective work of this year's laureates has done much to change the field of development. It has attracted generations of the smartest PhD students to the area, and genuinely given us an ability to enact policies to help the poor," Rajan wrote.

"India will be especially proud of the honour that Abhijit has received - he is largely a product of India's educational system, including Presidency College and Jawaharlal Nehru University (with finishing touches at Harvard). He continues to do important work on India, including offering policy advice, some of which, I am glad to say, I have been a minor part of," he further wrote.

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"Abhijit also speaks his mind, as you will see in his commentary on my Jindal Lecture II. I certainly will walk taller today, basking vicariously in Abhijit's recognition," Rajan continued.

The former RBI governor last Friday had said that Indian economy "has become too big an economy to be run from the top" criticising the concentration of power in Modi 2.0 government.

"India has become too big an economy to be run from the top. And unfortunately, the experience so far is that it simply doesn't work," Rajan said. He made the comments while delivering the second of the Two-part OP Jindal lecture on the Indian economy at the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the USA.

"This government is extremely centralised which puts a lot of pressure on the leadership. The leadership doesn't have a consistent and articulated vision on how to achieve economic growth," he stated.

Also Read: Who is Abhijit Banerjee? Indian-origin economist who has won Nobel Prize

"Today what we have is a PMO which essentially works through the bureaucracy. The ministerial-level is often bypassed. Ministers are disempowered for the most part," Rajan added. He also enunciated that the bureaucrats are reluctant to take any decisions by themselves and do not have key ideas for carrying out reforms.

Meanwhile, Banerjee who won this years' Nobel Prize for Economics had said on Monday that the condition of the Indian economy is "on a shaky ground".

"After witnessing the present (growth) data, just can't be sure about it (revival of the economy in near future)," he articulated. "In the last five-six years, at least we could witness some growth, but now that assurance is also gone," Banerjee told a news channel from the US.

Also Read: Raghuram Rajan issues warning alert for Modi govt on economy

The real GDP growth of India has gone down from a peak of 8.2% in 2016-17 to 6.8% in 2018-19, with the fourth quarter of 2018-19 dipping to 5.8%. The first quarter of 2019-20 is expected to dip further to 5.6%.

Banerjee, 58, won this years' Nobel Prize in Economics along with wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty". The economist said he never thought he would get a Nobel so early in his career.

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