A biography for Abhijit Banerjeehasn’t been written yet.
“We value seriousness and willingness to solve problems.”
“Milk production is one of India's great success stories.”
“When I was a graduate student, I actually took a course in development economics and I thought it was the most boring thing in the world.”
“Even Milton Friedman - doyen of radical free market thought - was willing to consider some government intervention into primary education on the grounds that it is unfair for children to not get a chance in life because they were born to poor parents.”
“You don't boost growth by cutting taxes, you do that by giving money to people.”
“My guess is that while the elites would like cleaner air, they are not willing to give up the convenience of being able to use their cars at will to get it, perhaps because they believe (I suspect incorrectly) that they can protect themselves from the consequences of vehicular pollution by investing in air-conditioners and air purifiers.”
“I have always found it difficult to wrap my head around population policies.”
“So, I went to Harvard and I got exposed to American work habits. I didn't even realise for a while that I was behind. I kind of had the illusion that I was understanding things. But people worked so hard and the thing I learnt first in America was that people work incredibly hard.”
“The problem of getting from home to the metro, BRT or bus stop makes many people take their cars to work. Why not start a fleet of electric buses that just circle through neighbourhoods connecting them to the various public transport hubs?”
“It is absolute poverty that you could end, but I think relative poverty is a whole other issue.”
“One big mistake that we made in Delhi is that we made it a low-rise city which means that rich people have nice green colonies while the poor live in dusty areas.”
“Like many free market economists, with whom he had little else in common, Nehru seemed to believe that people will find a way to get their children educated.”
“Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression.”
“The AAP was not the first group of well-meaning outsiders in politics.”
“The world's poorest people use the cheapest available fuels - dung and twigs and even leaves.”
“We are specialists who have something special to say. We have had no problem with working in any state interested in evaluating their policies.”
“The tragedy of the UPA is not that it didn't do anything, but that it is not able to take credit for what it has done. By staying silent when it should have been shouting from the rooftop and by protecting the guilty, it surrendered the governance agenda to AAP.”
“We will remember UPA 2, if at all, it seems, as that period when things went mysteriously wrong - for the bribe-taking, buck-passing, foot-dragging, and general sense of paralysis.”
“Gujarat is a pro-business state, where civil society organisations are comfortable with working to make sure that business does not suffer. Large parts of the rest of India, for better or worse, are very different.”
“I'm not an early morning person.”