Manmohan Singh congratulates Abhijit Banerjee, his wife for winning Nobel, lauds path-breaking work

Former prime minister and Congress leader Manmohan Singh on Monday congratulated Indian-origin economist and academic Professor Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Esther Duflo on jointly winning the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and termed their work as 'path-breaking'.

"It gives me immense pleasure and pride to know that you are now the second Indian to receive a Nobel Prize in Economics, after my dear friend Professor Amartya Sen. I am delighted to know that your wife Esther Duflo is also a winner jointly of this Nobel Prize for Economics," Singh said in a letter to Banerjee.

He also outlined that Banerjee's scholarly work on poverty alleviation and development of new techniques such as 'Randomized Control Trials' were truly "path-breaking".

"I am particularly pleased, as a student of economics, that the Committee chose to honour pioneering innovations in development economics that are very applicable and useful to policymaking in developing countries such as India," the former prime minister said.

Banerjee, along with his French-American wife Esther Duflo and the US' Michael Kremer were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

The research conducted by the 2019 Economic Sciences laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research," said a tweet from the official handle of the Nobel Prize committee.