Long-time Narendra Modi-baiter Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen has been challenged on his own turf of welfare economics. The challenger is NITI Aayog vice chairman Rajiv Kumar.

While Sen once more opened a front against the Modi-led NDA government when he declared that India had taken a “quantum jump” backwards since 2014, so much so, that it was second only to Pakistan, Kumar underlined that the professor’s view was from a distance and it was far away from the Indian reality on the ground.

“I wish Professor Amartya Sen would spend some time within India and actually look at conditions on the ground. And at least review all work that has been done in the last four years by the Modi government before making such statements,” Kumar said on Sunday (15 July).

“I actually would like to challenge him to show me another period of four years where so much work has been done for making India cleaner, inclusive and more caring economy,” Kumar added.

While Sen was speaking at the launch of his book Bharat aur Uske Virodhabhas — the Hindi edition of An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions that he authored, this is not the first time that he went after Prime Minister Modi.

Pointing at the structural reforms India’s several sectors have undergone since 2014, Kumar said, “If these things are not clear to him, then, I think he should spend some time here.”

Sen has been a chronic Modi critic for a long time and this was not the first time when he had made uncouth comments on the BJP regime. Though Sen had called demonetisation as a “despotic action”, PM Modi had retorted saying, “hard work is more powerful than Harvard”.