Modi congratulates Abhijit Banerjee, so does Rahul but with "Modinomics" twist to it

New Delhi, Oct 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi both took to Twitter to congratulate Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee who won the Nobel Prize for Economics, but there was a small difference in the way two leaders wished the Nobel Laureate.

Along with the formal congratulatory message, Rahul mentioned Congress' ambitious NYAY programme, a proposed minimum income guarantee scheme which the grand old party had promised to implement if voted to power, and said it was, in fact, Nobel Prize price winner Abhijit Banerjee who helped conceptualise it.

Rahul, in the same tweet, took a dig at BJP-led Centre, and said "NYAY had the power to destroy poverty", but "we now have Modinomics".

"Congratulations to #AbhijitBanerjee on winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. Abhijit helped conceptualise NYAY that had the power to destroy poverty and boost the Indian economy. Instead, we now have Modinomics, that's destroying the economy and boosting poverty," Rahul's tweet read.

Prime Minister Modi congratulated Banerjee, saying he has made notable contributions in the field of poverty alleviation.

Banerjee shared the award with his French-American wife Esther Duflo and another American economist Michael Kremer for their "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."

"Congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee on being conferred the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He has made notable contributions in the field of poverty alleviation," Modi wrote on Twitter.

He also congratulated Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for wining the Nobel. Born in Mumbai, the 58-year-old economist is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He studied at the University of Calcutta and Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University before receiving his PhD in 1988 from Harvard University.

It must be recalled that when India's second lunar space mission Chandrayaan-2 was launched, Congress immediately tweeted that it was country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's "visionary move" to provide funds for space research.

"This is a good time to remember the visionary move of India's first PM Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to fund space research through INCOSPAR in 1962 which later became ISRO. And also Dr Manmohan Singh for sanctioning the Chandrayan-2 project in 2008," the Congress said minutes after Chandrayaan-2 was launched from the Sriharikota launch base.

The Congress party also tweeted, saying, "Congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee for winning the Nobel Prize 2019. His incredible work in poverty alleviation has made our country proud. The renowned economist was a key consultant for the path breaking NYAY programme presented by the Congress party." Congress leader and former Union minister Jairam Ramesh also tweeted, saying, "Delighted that Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have won this year's Economics Nobel. As Minister of Environment and Forests in 2010, I had asked Duflo to work on market instruments for pollution control. I'm glad that system is now in use in Gujarat."