I was very lucky to be born into a very academic family. I was well-read, well-trained in mathematics. I had lots of advantages to start with.

So, I went to Harvard and I got exposed to American work habits. I didn't even realise for a while that I was behind. I kind of had the illusion that I was understanding things. But people worked so hard and the thing I learnt first in America was that people work incredibly hard.

I was an Indian with zero sense of caste till I was 20. That's an unusual privilege but it came out of the fact that I was a middle-class Bengali.

Abhijit Banerjee Quotes