Team PUKAR was absolutely thrilled to read the elating news about Professor Abhijit Banerjee receiving Nobel Prize for economics. Professor Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT won this coveted honour for his pioneering work along with Professor Esther Duflo and Professor Michael Kremer for their pioneering work in establishing Randomizing Control Trials (RCT) as an effective instrument for social science research. They have applied this instrument with precision while studying a wide range of issues that are responsible for global poverty including health, education, agriculture, and gender. They have successfully developed programs based upon their research to address the issues of poverty alleviation.
PUKAR had another very special reason for the elation. PUKAR has worked diligently in the area of Community Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) in various formats since 2005. After hearing this work from PUKAR’s Executive Director Dr. Anita Patil-Deshmukh, Professor Banerjee readily agreed to deliver PUKAR’s Carol Breckenridge Memorial Lecture in the year 2013. At that lecture, he discussed the use of RCTs in education and ASER reports. It was a moment of pride for us then and today he has made us all stand tall!
Our heartiest Congratulations to Professor Banerjee.
