The International Monetary Fund recently stated that India is set to surpass Japan to become the fourth-largest economy in the world in 2025. While the projection masked the underlying realities of the average Indian, it was enough for the mainstream Indian media to rush to celebrate.
Some of the cheer was also linked to Niti Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam’s statement last week that India had already surpassed Japan, a claim contradicted by several experts, including Niti member Arvind Virmani.
Several outlets had hailed the projection, calling it part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for 2047, while others compared sceptics to those who questioned the ceasefire following Operation Sindoor.
We got a bizarre comparison: Pakistan is higher on the happiness index list than India because the latter has people criticising every achievement of the country while the neighbouring country’s citizens can even remain happy after losing a war. There were headlines that read, ‘Modinomics takes India forward’, and attributed this growth to the PM’s economic policies. We saw anchors shouting ‘remarkable achievement’ and tickers that read, ‘India the Superpower’. If that wasn’t enough, there were aggressive news anchors declaring that India had “defeated” Japan. Headlines in a few Hindi dailies claimed it was an indication that India has become a superpower.
However, very few gave the context: what the IMF report actually meant to the average Indian, taking into account per capita income and human development indices.
For example, India’s per capita GDP is still below $2,500, the lowest among the top economies. The country’s infant mortality rate is 24.5, the highest among the top five economies; 93.3 percent of the population has access to clean water (lowest among top economies); only 78 percent of Indians have access to safely managed sanitation facilities; and the country is ranked 118 in the Happiness Index, far behind other major economies.
Here is an analysis of India’s key economic indicators from 2010 to 2023 – such as nominal GDP, GDP per capita, and purchasing power parity – in comparison with major economies.
These graphics also include Vietnam, Cameroon, and Sudan because they had a GDP per capita that was similar to India in 2010, with Cameroon and Sudan being the closest. This allows us to explore how countries with comparable economic starting points have fared in terms of development, equity, and quality of life over the years. Datasets for 2024 and 2025 were unavailable for these indicators.
GDP per capita is calculated by dividing a country’s total GDP by its population.
Purchasing power parity means that the same amount of money should buy the same goods in different countries when prices are adjusted for exchange rates.
Nominal GDP is the total market value of all goods and services produced in a country’s economy over a given period, not adjusted to account for price changes from inflation and deflation.
The human development index is calculated as the geometric mean of three indices: life expectancy index, education index, and income index. Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a person is expected to live. Infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of children under one year of age per 1,000 births.
With research inputs from Vibha Rajeev and Parth Sarthi.
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