THE ACCIDENTAL ECONOMIST

Nobel winner Esther Duflo wanted to sensitise children to the issues of global poverty, so she wrote a book about it

- REYA MEHROTRA

It is a sultry evening in Delhi and we are at the Alliance Francaise de Delhi for the launch of French-American economist and Nobel winner Esther Duflo and illustrator Cheyenne Olivier's latest book, Poor Economics for Kids, consisting of stories that aim to sensitise children to the world around them. Duflo, dressed simply in a red kurta, has an effervescence about her as she endeavours to answer the questions of her young audience. Like that of a boy of around 12, who refers to her Nobel speech about wanting to make people understand poverty. "By writing this book, have you achieved it?" he asks. Duflo is patient yet encouraging, smilingly explaining that the job of eradicating poverty can never be fully over, and so she will continue to write more books and work towards it.

But the question that really intrigues her is one by a librarian in the back. If one has not experienced poverty, how can they connect with the story? It is a good question, one which harks back to Duflo's own childhood. She never knew poverty, for she comes from a privileged background. Her parents a paediatrician and a maths professorraised her in a western suburb of Paris. All her knowledge of the underprivileged came from her mother, who volunteered across the world and worked closely with children who were victims of war. "I was amazed and somewhat awed by my luck: how come I, Esther, get to be born in this middle-class, intellectual family, with loving parents, decent schools, and all the food and books I need, while some other kids are born in Congo, in the middle of a war, and are forced to carry a Kalashnikov to fight?" she asks in an essay written when she won the Nobel Prize for Economics, along with her husband, Abhijit Banerjee, and colleague Michael Kremer, in 2019.