Indian-American MIT Prof Abhijit Banerjee, wife win Nobel in Economics

Agencies
October 14, 2019

Stockholm, Oct 14: Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, who won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics jointly with his wife Esther Duflo and another economist Michael Kremer, is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Banerjee, born in 1961 in Mumbai, bagged the award for his "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".

The 58-year-old economist received his PhD in 1988 from Harvard University.

He also studied at the University of Calcutta and Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

In 2003, he founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with his French-American wife Duflo, who is also a MIT professor, and Sendhil Mullainathan..

He remains one of the lab's directors, according to the MIT website.

Banerjee is a past president of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the NBER, a CEPR research fellow, International Research Fellow of the Kiel Institute, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P Sloan Fellow and a winner of the Infosys prize.

He is the author of a large number of articles and four books, including Poor Economics, which won the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year.

"Why would a man in Morocco who doesn't have enough to eat buy a television? Why is it so hard for children in poor areas to learn, even when they attend school? Does having lots of children actually make you poorer? Answering questions like these is critical if we want to have a chance to really make a dent against global poverty," Banerjee wrote in the book 'Poor Economics'.

He is the editor of three more books and has directed two documentary films.

He also served on the UN Secretary-General's High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the website said.

Duflo, born 1972 in Paris, received her PhD in 1999 from MIT.

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Agencies
January 15,2020

New Delhi, Jan 15: A Delhi court on Wednesday granted bail to Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad in connection with the Daryaganj violence case.

The court has ordered him not to hold any protest in Delhi till February 16th.

While hearing the case, the Judge had asked Azad's counsel to read out some of his social media posts.

Advocate Mehmood Pracha, representing Azad, had on Tuesday said that the petitioner was sent to jail without any evidence in connection with anti-CAA protests in Delhi's Darya Ganj area last year.

"I think the court's comments should become a precedent for the country. The Public Prosecutor at the behest of police tried to make this a communal issue. We told the court that the government has a problem with Azad because he made the CAA-NPR-NRC an issue for everyone. 
The Court also sought evidence," Pracha told ANI after Delhi's Tis Hazari court deferred the bail plea of Azad till today.

On Wednesday, the court pulled up the Delhi Police for failing to show any evidence against Azad.

Azad was arrested on December 21 last year after he led a march from Jama Masjid against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. He was sent to judicial custody till January 18 at Tihar jail.

The Bhim Army chief was charged with rioting, unlawful assembly and inciting the mob to indulge in violence after vandalism in Delhi's Daryaganj area.

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News Network
May 21,2020

London, May 21: Working mothers in Europe and the United States are taking on most of the extra housework and childcare created by lockdown - and many are struggling to cope, a survey showed on Thursday.

Women with children now spend an average 65 hours a week on the unpaid chores - nearly a third more than fathers - according to the Boston Consulting Group, which questioned parents in five countries.

"Women have been doing too much household work for too long, and this crisis is pushing them to a point that's simply unsustainable," Rachel Thomas, of U.S.-based women's rights group LeanIn.Org, said in response to the data.

"We need a major culture shift in our homes and in our companies ... We should use this moment to build a better way to work and live – one that's fair for everybody."

Researchers say fallout from the pandemic weighs on women in a host of ways, be it in rising domestic violence or in lower wages, as some women cut paid work to take on the new duties.

With lockdowns shutting schools and keeping citizens at home, creating a mountain of domestic work, public campaigns from Georgia to Mexico have urged men to do their fair share.

But women, who on average already do more at home than men, are now shouldering most of the new coronavirus burden, too, said the survey of more than 3,000 working parents in the United States, Britain, Italy, Germany and France.

Women's unpaid hours at home have nearly doubled to 65 hours a week, said the survey, against 50 logged by an average father.

British women are more likely to support others in the COVID-19 pandemic and are finding it harder to stay positive, according to separate analysis released this week by polling firm Ipsos MORI and feminist organisation The Fawcett Society.

It is "no surprise" to see women do more childcare and housekeeping on top of their day jobs, Jacqui Hunt of women's rights group Equality Now, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

However, there are "hopeful signs" that men in West Africa are sharing more childcare during the pandemic in a shift in social norms, found a small rapid analysis by humanitarian organisation CARE International released on Wednesday.

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Agencies
January 11,2020

New Delhi, Jan 11: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Friday said that he has never seen innocents like the Indian people, who believe the claims made by the government on the implementation of its programmes. The former Union Minister, addressing a literary event, said, "I have never seen innocents like the Indian people. If something appears on print (and named two newspapers also), we believe it. We believe anything."

Claims like all villages having been electrified in the country and toilets built for 99 per cent of families in India were being believed, he said.

Similar was the case of the Ayushman Bharat scheme, (Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana or PM-JAY is a flagship health care scheme of the Centre), he alleged.

Stating that his Delhi-based driver's father had to get a surgery done under the scheme, he said, however, it could not be performed.

"I asked him (car driver) if he had the Ayushman card and he showed a card and I told him to take it (to hospital). In hospital after hospital, they said they were not aware of anything like that (Ayushman scheme). But we believe that the Ayushman scheme has come to the whole of India," he said.

Further, he said "we believe that for any disease, treatment will be done (indicating the Ayushman scheme) without shelling out money. We are being innocents."

Many news items and data were contrary to the truth, he added.

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