He is not a million times better economist than Amartya Sen. In fact he built his reputation as valuable as that of Amartya Sen we can say. But for the record Amartya Sen has done way more and achieved way more in the field of development economics that some economists ever would. And Avijit Banerjee surpasses both Sen and Bhagwati
Excellent comment. In fact, it's even wrong to call Sen a development economist. He is a Marxist economist. Bhagwati and Rajan are proper classical economists. Among Bengalis, Sanjeev Sanyal and Bibek Debroy.
because of Presidency college in Kolkata which was at the forefront of development economics in 1960s when the current crop of 'super-economists' studied there, it had the best teachers of the era who also attarcted best students and the virtuous cycle went on for the next 30 years, then of course liberalisation happened and the best students went to engineering (which boomed in the late 90s)
most of the developmental economists are therefore from bengal
DSE wanted to emulate this model and has been successful to an extent
Born in Mumbai, Dr Jagdish Bhagwati is an economist equal to, if not greater than, Dr Sen and Dr Abhijit Banerjee. However, a better way to rephrase your question would be: "Why do the majority of top "Development Economists" come from Bengal?"
You mean why so many Nobel laureates? Cause we Bengalis are intellectually better than majority of the northern parts of India. The south still comes close
Jagdish Bhagwati is a million times better than Sen and has been denied a Nobel only because he is not part of the left-liberal cabal. I also find Sen to be deeply hypocritical. Lecturing about poverty while travelling first class and being married to a member of the super-wealthy Rothschild family. This is what Bhagwati has said about Sen:
"Sen...is sometimes described as the Mother Teresa of economics. But she did a lot of good at the micro level, whereas (as I discuss below) his policy prescriptions have done huge damage instead. Let us not insult Mother Teresa."
Then let's not forget his political bias. Attacking Modi but silent on the violence and corruption in Bengal.
Banerjee is good and does not show such political bias. But I have reservations about his morals (Duflo was his former student and co-researcher when he got her pregnant, while still married to his wife: see links below).
most of the developmental economists are therefore from bengal
DSE wanted to emulate this model and has been successful to an extent
Jagdish Bhagwati
Raghuram Rajan
Manomohan Singh
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Meghnad Desai
P. N. Dhar
and countless more non Bengalis have made it.
"Sen...is sometimes described as the Mother Teresa of economics. But she did a lot of good at the micro level, whereas (as I discuss below) his policy prescriptions have done huge damage instead. Let us not insult Mother Teresa."
https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi/amartya-sen-bhagwati-academic-debate-gets-caught-in-politics/story-cJT45F1gbCJJhQB0mb8YSM.html
Then let's not forget his political bias. Attacking Modi but silent on the violence and corruption in Bengal.
Banerjee is good and does not show such political bias. But I have reservations about his morals (Duflo was his former student and co-researcher when he got her pregnant, while still married to his wife: see links below).
https://www.project-syndicate.org/blog/esther-s-baby
https://www.ft.com/content/81804a1a-6d08-11e1-ab1a-00144feab49a