Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday met Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee and said “India is proud of his accomplishments”.
“Excellent meeting with Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee. His passion towards human empowerment is clearly visible. We had a healthy and extensive interaction on various subjects. India is proud of his accomplishments. Wishing him the very best for his future endeavours,” Modi tweeted posting a photograph of himself and Banerjee on Twitter.
After the meeting Banerjee said Modi spoke about “his way of thinking about India, which was quite unique”. 
“One hears about policies but one rarely hears about the thinking behind it,” Banerjee told reporters.
“He talked about the way he sees governance in particular...and how it, therefore, creates structures of elite control over the governance process,” Banerjee added.
“And in that process, he very nicely explained how he is trying to reform the bureaucracy to make it more responsive, to understand the ways in which people’s views need to be taken into account,” he said.
Banerjee said that an important point for India is to create a bureaucracy which takes the views of the people into account.
“I think it was a very important point for India to have a bureaucracy that lives on the ground and get its stimulus from how life is on the ground. Without that, we get an unresponsive government,” he signed said.
He said the prime minister joked about the media trying to bring out “anti-Modi remarks” from him.
“The prime minister started by cracking a joke about how the media is trying to trap me into saying anti-Modi things. He has been watching TV, he has been watching you guys; he knows what you are trying to do.” 
Some Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including cabinet ministers, have been critical of Banerjee’s work. Addressing a press conference in Pune last week, Railways and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said Banerjee had “a Left-leaning mindset” and that his views had been rejected by India.
Ahead of Lok Sabha elections, Banerjee was instrumental in framing Congress’ Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) or minimum income guarantee scheme. The party was routed in the polls.
BJP secretary and former West Bengal unit president Rahul Sinha followed up on Goyal’s jibe with a barb linking the Nobel Prize to the Indian-origin economist’s marriage to a French-American economist.
Later in the day, Banerjee flew to Kolkata to meet his mother.
He received a tumultuous welcome at the airport. He was received with bouquets by state ministers Bratya Basu and Firhad Hakim who is also the mayor of Kolkata and driven out of the terminal in a golf cart on his first visit to the eastern metropolis after winning the coveted award.
With photographers and journalists frantically capturing every moment of the historic occasion, and autograph seekers rushing towards the famed economist, the large posse of police personnel and commandos had a tough time in taking him to the waiting car fitted with red beacons - as a mark of respect for his feat.
“Welcome home Nobel laureate Mr Abhijit Banerjee” and “Banglai swagato, Nobel joyi, Bangla tomai niye gorbito (Wecome to Bengal, Nobel winner, Bengal is proud of you)” - read the placards which also had big pictures of the Kolkata boy - an alumnus of two of the city’s landmark institutions - South Point School and Presidency University (Presidency College when he graduated).
With a pilot car blaring siren, Banerjee’s convoys started off for his South Kolkata residence.
On the way, there were large display boards and festoons dotting the route welcoming Banerjee.
He will leave for the US tomorrow morning.
Banerjee, an Indian-origin economist and an academic professor, was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences along with his French-American wife Esther Duflo and American economist Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” 
The 58-year-old Kolkata-born economist is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.