A biography for Abhijit Banerjeehasn’t been written yet.
“Whenever we try something new, mistakes will happen. Seemingly good ideas will fail and need to be re-thought.”
“I am no Rushdie. The only people who think of silencing me are my students, on days when my lectures are more opaque than usual.”
“Healthcare expenses often wipe out families.”
“Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi, the ultimate didi and dada of Indian politics, should really commiserate.”
“Most farmers know that their children's future will probably not be in agriculture, but they have a hard time imagining a different life.”
“The investment climate in Gujarat under Modi has been very supportive of business interests; but it was the same under the Congress governments that came before him.”
“We might think we are very different from Pakistan but we are not; we are the same people, with the same capacity for warmth and passion and intolerance and violence.”
“We need to learn to work with political systems that are not perfect instead of taking the view: let's first fix the politics, then we'll fix the rest.”
“Good intentions and grand theories do not make a good programme. Programmes work best when they're based on a detailed understanding of the problem being solved and how they are implemented on the ground.”
“If PM-Kisan is implemented well, it will leave some money in the hands of poor farmers.”
“I was very lucky to be born into a very academic family. I was well-read, well-trained in mathematics. I had lots of advantages to start with.”
“One great pleasure of being an academic is the ability to trade in ideas with your colleagues and students; it is not much fun being the only connoisseur of some fine point.”
“I think it is a very important point for India to create a bureaucracy that lives on the ground and gets its stimulus from how life is on the ground.”
“We've learned a huge amount from organisations like Seva Mandir and Pratham, for example. In my personal experience, these organisations work on a very large scale with very poor people.”
“In terms of being a professional, I want to be professional with everyone.”
“Mass protests often get books or films banned, but very few people take to the streets to challenge the right of the State to decide what we can read or watch - it's still someone else's problem.”
“I have learnt an enormous amount from talking to people on the ground.”
“Public conversations about who we are and who we want to be are key to the vitality of our democracy, and leaders can seed those conversations when they speak out their own views.”
“The BJP must nurture the institutions that put credible checks and balances in place.”
“Celebrate creativity and confidence in the face of adversity.”