Hopeful of working with Bengal govt, says Abhijit Banerjee

Kolkata: Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee on Tuesday met Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at Nabanna and said that he was hopeful of working with the Bengal government.

"They (state government) have asked me to work with them. There are many interesting schemes in the state. We will try to work and nothing will stop due to lack of opportunities," said Banerjee after the hour-long meeting at the state Secretariat.

Prior to the meeting, Banerjee visited Nabanna soon after attending the annual convocation of Calcutta University, where he was conferred honorary D.Litt. He was accompanied by his mother Nirmala, who had retired as a professor of Economics from the Kolkata-based Centre for Studies in Social Sciences.

"I had come to listen to the Chief Minister and learnt about the interesting things that are being done here. Now I will learn and study. I have always been a learner and it's not expected that suddenly I'll become an expert," he told reporters at Nabanna.

The Chief Minister, along with senior officials escorted Abhijit Banerjee and his mother downstairs as they left Nabanna.

She had met the Nobel laureate and his mother at her Kolkata residence in October and had sought help from him in assessing the impact of the state's social welfare schemes.