Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee’s mother passes away; cremated with full state honours

Kolkata: Professor Nirmala Banerjee, mother of Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee passed away at a private hospital. She was 87. The Bengal government performed her last rights with full state honours.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee condoled her death. She said: “Deeply saddened at the demise of Prof. Nirmala Banerjee, renowned economist, and mother of Nobel laureate Prof. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee. She breathed her last today at Kolkata. I visited her at the hospital yesterday. Prof. Nirmala Banerjee was trained at the London School of Economics and was a former Professor of Economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata. She was married to eminent economist late Prof. Dipak Banerjee of the Presidency College.” “I came to know Nirmaladi well and have many sweet memories now. Her demise is a great loss in our public life. My deep condolences to Abhijit, Aniruddha, other family members including Esther Duflo, as well as Nirmaladi’s friends and students,” Banerjee said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Accomplished economist, Prof Banerjee was admitted to a private hospital on EM Bypass on Wednesday after she fell in the bathroom of her Ballygunge apartment and suffered a grievous head injury the previous night. She was kept on invasive ventilation support. Earlier, on October 26, she was admitted to the same hospital with respiratory distress and was treated and discharged three days later.

Born in Maharashtra, Banerjee studied at the London School of Economics and taught at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta. Economist Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee rushed to the city from the US where he teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.