76th Independence Day: India's GDP through the years

India is celebrating its 76th Independence Day this year, marking 75 years of independence from British rule.

Ever since independence in 1947, India has made great strides in building its economy which was left in tatters after colonialisation, and as of 2021, stands tall among the top 10 economies of the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product, according to the World Bank. The International Monetary Fund describes GDP as a measure of the monetary value of final goods and services—that is, those that are bought by the final user—produced in a country in a given period of time. It counts all of the output generated within the borders of a country.

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Here is how India has progressed through the years in terms of GDP, which the World Bank began calculating in 1960:

What is interesting is that every major economy saw a dip in their GDP values in 2020, with recovery seen only in 2021, as the world was suffering under the clutch of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the current global situation, including the war in Ukraine and tensions between China and Taiwan, it is likely that the consequential bottlenecks in global supply chains and availability of goods such as grains, are likely to cause another impact to global GDP in 2022.

While looking at the graph of the GDP presents an optimistic picture, a look at the graph of GDP per capita (which is defined as the purchasing power parity of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given year, divided by the average population for the year) however, shows an entirely different tale, with India squarely on the bottom of the list, despite having a higher GDP than France as of 2021.

According to the IMF, while GDP per capita is often used as a measure of whether the average citizen in a country is better or worse off, it does not capture things that may be deemed important to general well-being. This may include environmental impact of economic growth, or the reduction in availability of leisure time to the population of a country.