Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | The other side of life in the 5th largest economy

The jubilation over India’s GDP outstripping Britain’s is a reminder that Indians often take pride in records that should rightly be ignored or even sometimes treated as a matter of national shame. “Proud moment for India to pip the United Kingdom, our colonial ruler, as the fifth largest economy: India $3.5 trillion vs the UK $3.2 trillion”, gushed Kotak Mahindra Bank’s managing director, Uday Kotak. US President George W. Bush fed that fallacy because, as he told the Asia Society, the United States could sell so many Whirlpool washing machines and Domino’s pizzas to India’s rising middle class. True, the trend is not confined to India, and the UNDP records that “for the first time on record, the global HDI has dropped for two years in a row, taking the world back to just after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement.” But contrary to the boasts of our leaders, India does not seem automatically destined to lead a world that is dazzled by its meteoric economic performance. The world’s fifth-largest economy according to nominal GDP and the third-largest if purchasing power parity is taken into account, India ranks 142nd by GDP and 125th by GDP.