New Delhi Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has given a new perspective on the role of education in solving the problem of poverty among nations. Speaking at the 2021 Yidan Awards Summit, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor said that education is the key to democracy as it gives people full access to the resources of the society and makes them full participants in various social activities.
Speaking at the session “Putting children at the heart of teaching and learning” alongside co-Nobel laureate Dr Esther Duflo, Banerjee said that education can be an important aspect that has helped reduce poverty. However, he added that it certainly did not hold the key to economic upliftment.
,[Irrespective of whether] Whether education is the key to poverty alleviation, it is the key to democracy. [Education is fundamental to the] The idea of being in a society where people can be full participants and have full access to society’s resources and its potential. By democracy I do not mean political democracy, but I mean democracy in the deep sense of giving a chance to everyone.”
“Education, even if it does not increase a person’s income, certainly makes him a different person. Access to education is in a way a fundamental barrier to how we envision a democratic society. Education in this sense The economic aspect of it is just one aspect.”
Abhijit Banerjee along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics (Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) for helping to develop an innovative experimental approach to alleviating global poverty Gaya.
Banerjee said that poverty is not a problem and it is like a cancer which manifests different problems and each one deserves his own answer… People are different reasons to be sad, people are sick. People don’t have access to financial markets, people don’t have access to infrastructure.
“… there are all kinds of very good reasons why people don’t reach their potential. What education does is builds their potential. It gives them the choice to be who they can be. I think That this is a fundamental feeling in which education is different. Its formation, it makes us who we are,” Banerjee said, adding that her teachings showed that poverty cannot be reduced by merely educating people. , because education can be pointless if labor markets do not provide jobs.
Duflo said one of his experiments in Ghana showed that education was responsible for starting a life-changing cycle, but at the same time the absence of a labor market was creating barriers.
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