Meet Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, the mild-mannered sharp shooter

Banerjee tells Anjuli Bhargava he wants the world to have the right conversations before marching on in its battle against extreme poverty

If ideology, ignorance and inertia were human and Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, economist and one of the three 2019 Nobel laureates for economics, had a licence to kill, he’d shoot with gay abandon. And while at it, he would probably also eliminate hunches, preconceived notions and bad advice being dished out by consultants (all of you in immaculate blue pinstripes and pink ties, watch out!) who appear to have all the answers, but evidently don’t. 

A lethal combination of faulty diagnosis along with superficial treatment explains why almost 700 million people still live in extreme poverty globally, although substantial progress has been