TEHRAN - Despite being hailed as a fastest growing economy, India has taken a “quantum jump in a wrong direction” since 2014, and because of the backward movement, it is now the second worst in the region, the world-renowned economist Amartya Sen said.

“Things have gone pretty badly wrong…it (India) has taken a quantum jump in the wrong direction since 2014,” Sen said at the launch of the Hindi edition of his book ‘A Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradiction’, which he has co-authored with development economist Jean Dreze.

Twenty years ago, of the six countries – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal – India was the second best after Sri Lanka, remarked Sen. “Now, it is the second worst. Pakistan has managed to shield us from being the worst,” he said.

The government deflected attention from the issues related to inequalities and caste system, said the Nobel Laureate. Sen has been a strong critic of Modi-led BJP government’s economic policies. He has also denounced the government’s move of ‘demonetization’.

Taking a dig at the Modi government, he said that during the freedom movement it was difficult to see that a political battle could be won by playing up the Hindu identity, but that has changed now. “It is not a battle of one identity against the other, or Mr. Modi versus Mr. Rahul Gandhi, it is an issue of what India is,” he said.