When Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee spent 10 days in Tihar jail

[kevinUsa]

bhijit Banerjee, the Indian-origin economist who won the Nobel prize on Monday, spent 10 days in Delhi's Tihar jail for participating in a protest as a student of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

In a scenario not unlike the 2016 JNU sedition row, a bunch of JNU students was arrested and "beaten up" by the police in 1983 for "gheraoing the vice-chancellor in his house for the umpteenth time" for expelling the president of the student union.

In an article, published in Hindustan Times in 2016, Abhijit Banerjee shared that he and his friends were kept in Tihar jail for 10 days and were beaten up. "We were beaten (I was) and thrown into Tihar jail, charged not quite with sedition, but attempt to murder and the rest. The charges were eventually dropped thank God but not before we spent 10 days or so in Tihar," he said in the article.

 

The world-renowned economist, recognised for his work on global poverty alleviation, says in the article that the police action was backed by Congress government at the Centre and Left-leaning faculty. He said there were allegations that the student body president was expelled to instigate protests, which could be used to change admission policy, which gave weightage to students from rural areas.

"What it undoubtedly was is an attempt by the State to establish the lines of authority. We are the boss they were telling us, shut up and behave," Abhijit Banerjee said in the 2016 article.

Drawing parallels to the JNU sedition row, hitting headlines at the time, Abhijit Banerjee said that the government intervention in the matter once again said that it wants to establish authority over the university campus.

Abhijit Banerjee, who also studied at Presidency University, Kolkata (BA Economics) and Harvard University (PhD), argued that the government action in both cases "endangered the safe space that universities have traditionally provided."

 

Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."