‘Poor Economics for Kids’: Nobel laureate Esther Duflo’s book for children imagines a fair world

Nobel laureate Esther Duflo and Cheyenne Oliver’s book for young readers, Poor Economics for Children, details the struggles of the poor of the Global South through vivid illustrations and easy-to-understand text.

Nilou lives in a village. That village can be in India or in Bangladesh, in Kenya, Vietnam or anywhere in the global South. Like any other village in the global south, life in Nilou’s village is difficult. Nilou herself finds the school curricula alienating; when her friend Afia is down with malaria, lack of money, health infrastructure, superstitions and corruption delay her treatment; her cousin has to go to the city in search of a job where, though he earns well, the sudden Covid-19 lockdown makes him anxious of the urban life. Moreover, like any other part of the world, this village is getting hotter by the year, villagers are facing water crises, floods and cyclones, there are occasional locust attacks, and mosquitoes are a menace.

An ordinary village

Then there is Magoo – a rich, powerful and patriarchal peasant cum politician with little interest in the well-being of the villagers; there is Sasha, the school teacher, eager to finish the syllabus regardless of the comprehension capabilities of her students; a geography graduate practising medicine, a corrupt pharmacist who fails to separate the good pills from the fake ones when his daughter is unwell, the profiteering middlemen, and so on.

Nilou’s world is not only about problems though. She and her friends have a fair share of fun and adventures. Nilou and Oola have strong and informed opinions about who should be the village head and they make sure that their voices are heard; Nilou’s friend Bibir discovers that the village witch is an ordinary, old and extremely poor woman who knows great stories and is a talented seamstress; shy Thumpa, the tree-hugger, bravely resists the lumbermen and encourages others to join her in the resistance. The children and the teenagers have dreams and ambitions that often break the gender stereotypes. The village has real problems, but Duflo ends each story on a positive note.

The problems get solved – sometimes through collective action, sometimes through government aid, and seldom through individual bravery. The feeling of “happily-ever-after” is further enhanced by the beautiful illustrations of Cheyenne Olivier. In Olivier’s illustrations, Nilou’s world becomes colourful and vibrant, full of people of all ages, genders, race, along with the fruit-hanging trees, blooming plants, birds, animals and insects. While Duflo reminds us of the grave problems that the villagers in the global South are facing, the neat resolutions she offers and the cheerful drawings of Olivier turn Nilou’s world almost into a fairyland.

A book of hope

But then who does not like a little magic? And, indeed, a proactive government, conscientious media, and people’s movements can do wonders – something that Duflo does not want her young readers to forget. She wants her readers to be curious, dream big, ask questions, and raise their voices like the characters in her stories often do. The pedagogic aim of this book is to sensitise young minds regarding the everyday struggles of the poor in the Global South, the social and cultural hierarchies and good and bad governance. But the poor in this book are not hapless victims – they take actions, demand services, protest and celebrate. In his foreword, Abhijit Banerjee hopes that in this book the children “will discover a world that is both very near us and very far, a world both very different and yet intensely familiar, a world that vividly demonstrates our shared humanity”. The book lives up to this hope.

To me, however, the main attraction of the book is the short concluding notes by Duflo at the end of each chapter. Written in very accessible language, these notes situate the ten stories that Duflo tells in real contexts. These notes articulate the research questions that the economists had in mind, the economic problems of the Global South to which they looked for solutions, the possible answers that they had to offer, how economists do research (the note following the story of Neso and Najy is my favourite), and very importantly, often the author by raising simple questions, urges the readers to think.

A wide range of readers will find these notes useful – people like me with no training in economics, educators thinking about child pedagogy, and the middle and high school children themselves. At a time when expertise is continuously devalued by people in power, facts and numbers are tampered with and misquoted by the highest authorities, an initiative like this coming from a noble laureate deserves high praise. Duflo, I hope, will inspire many others to make their research accessible to “non-experts” – children or adults – through writings, podcasts, videos and other possible formats. Such acts may effectively resist the onslaught of the WhatsApp university in our country.

Duflo takes a step further. After writing the book in French and then in English, she collaborates with Pratham Books to translate it into five Indian languages – Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil and Hindi. A laudable step, indeed! In our country, English remains an intimidating language for the students coming from the marginal sections of the society. Hence, translations often become a necessary step towards making knowledge accessible and democratic. As a Bengali myself engaged in a project of writing history for children in Bangla, I closely read the Bangla translations of Duflo’s book along with the English version. Unfortunately, the Bangla language translations do not live up to the expectations.

The Bengali translation

Of the ten stories that the English book has, the first five have been translated into Bangla. And, unlike the English version, Pratham Books has published each Bangla story as a separate book. Priced at Rs 100, these slim volumes can be bought separately and as a set and they may look less daunting to a child than the bulky Juggernaut one. But, one wonders why, Pratham Books chose to omit the concluding notes that Duflo has written at the end of each story. Moreover, the books do not have the translation of the foreword that Abhijit Banerjee has written. The foreword is important because it introduces what economics is and who the extremely poor are. It explains the work that Duflo and Banerjee have been doing for many years and won the Nobel Prize for. I assume the Bangla translations are primarily meant for underprivileged children who go to state-run schools and find English inaccessible. Do they not have the equal rights to knowledge? What kind of politics has shaped this partial translation initiative?

My list of complaints does not end here. Translated by Subhomoy Chattopadhyay, the Bangla books are full of incorrect and inconsistent spellings; the sentences are awkward, at times grammatically incorrect; typographical errors are frequent. It is the basic responsibility of the publishers to appoint a competent translator, peer-review the text, copy-edit and proofread the manuscripts. Pratham Books has miserably failed in this.

Finally, and this is perhaps a subjective opinion, while translating into regional languages, the translator needs to be cautious about the cultural context. Nour (or Noor) is a common name among Bengali Muslims. Nour Devi sounds awkward, Nour Bibi does not. Chattopadhyay seems unaware or indifferent towards the religion-specific honorifics. Similarly, a slight tweaking of the names (for example, Bibir can become Babar; Magoo can become Madhu etc.) can make the characters more relatable. Indeed, the translator has translated the nurse into an ASHA worker (in Afia is Feeling Sick) and Dadas the village doctor into Habu Doctor to make it context-specific. But consistency is not his strength.

Pratham Books, “a nonprofit publisher introducing children to the joy of reading”, must rise to the occasion. They need to withdraw the Bangla books from the market and do them again. There is no other way to rectify the damage. The book that Esther Duflo has written for the kids deserves better.

Anwesha Sengupta is the co-author of A Star Named Bibha and Other Stories.