British economist Meghnad Desai on Sunday termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat campaign “utter nonsense”.

Desai, a British peer, told reporters in Patna: “The Indian economy is really in nobody’s hands. The government is trying to make it ‘atmanirbhar’ (self-reliant), but that is utter nonsense. Whatever the government may say, nothing is happening. Nobody is coming to invest in the manufacturing sector.”

Desai was in Patna to participate in a discussion on his book How Economics Abandoned the Poor, moderated by professor Alakh N. Sharma and author Tripurdaman Singh on the final day of the three-day Ahad Anhad Festival of Words and Performances at the Bihar Museum.

Prime Minister Modi had launched the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission in May 2020 amid much fanfare with the aim of making the country self-reliant in all sectors.

Taking potshots at the way the Indian economy has progressed, Desai said: “When people talk about India being the fifth biggest and richest economy in the world, they are statistically right. But we also need to see that the country is at the 150th position in per capita income across the world.”

Desai, however, said India, with around 26 crore rich people who could afford a US-kind of lifestyle, or 20 per cent of the Asian country’s population, was the largest economy in the world to invest in.

“The secret of India is that it is turning out to be an efficient service economy with digitisation and other such things. No investor is interested in the old-fashioned ideas of manufacturing giants. They are interested in the service economy across the world. This is the area that should be focused on,” he said.

Desai called the United Nations a “complete failure”.