In final yr’s Independence Day speech on the Red Fort in Delhi, Narendra Modi made a daring pledge: India would grow to be a developed economic system by 2047, when it celebrates 100 years since its founding. The nation had three issues in its favour, the prime minister declared: “demography, democracy and diversity”.

The vow would have appeared implausible a decade in the past. In 2013, the yr earlier than Modi took energy, India was recognized by Morgan Stanley amongst a bunch of weak emerging-market economies, dubbed the “Fragile Five” for his or her reliance on overseas capital to gas their economies and, in lots of circumstances, large present account deficits.

Ten years later, Modi’s India is firmly within the sights of worldwide traders, consultants and buying and selling companions as one of many world’s fastest-growing large economies and a important “China plus one” vacation spot for firms in search of to cut back their publicity to political currents in Beijing.

In India’s upcoming nationwide election, anticipated between April and May, Modi will make a lot of his Bharatiya Janata get together’s financial file throughout its 10 years in authorities, touting its successes in delivering development, lowering poverty and constructing infrastructure together with airports, railways and roads.

But what do the numbers show?

The Financial Times has analysed official knowledge for gross home product development, unemployment and poverty discount, in addition to indicators monitoring job creation and employment, inspecting how they’ve carried out in absolute phrases and relatively towards different international locations in some circumstances.

India’s statistics are in lots of circumstances poor — the nation has not held a census since 2011, for instance — or in dispute, as within the case of unemployment knowledge, however the numbers level to some clear developments.

During Modi’s two phrases in workplace, India has on common been one of many fastest-growing massive economies. Between 2014 and 2022, GDP grew at a mean of 5.6 per cent in compound annual development price phrases. An common of 14 different massive creating economies had a CAGR of three.8 per cent over the identical interval.

But India’s development price was even larger from 2000 to 2010, at greater than 6 per cent on common. Economists mentioned India’s economic system would want to develop sooner than its present 6-7 per cent price with a purpose to soak up a rising variety of entrants into the workforce and meet Modi’s purpose of reaching developed nation standing by 2047.

India is the poorest among the many Brics nations, mentioned Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance on the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a former Reserve Bank of India governor, referring to the grouping that additionally contains Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa. It additionally “has a much longer distance of travel before it reaches their level of per capita income”, he mentioned. “Growth has been good, but it has to be set in perspective.”

Extreme poverty has continued to fall since Modi took energy. The share of India’s inhabitants dwelling in excessive poverty has fallen from 18.7 per cent in 2015 to 12 per cent in 2021, in accordance with World Bank knowledge. Urban and rural areas each registered a drop within the share of individuals dwelling under the worldwide poverty line of $2.15 a day.

These good points are partly because of beneficiant social transfers to the poorest beneath Modi’s authorities. In November, India prolonged one of many greatest such schemes, launched in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, beneath which greater than 813mn folks, or greater than half of the inhabitants, profit from free meals grains for an additional 5 years.

“The emphasis of this government has been on efficient delivery of a lot of welfare schemes,” mentioned Krishnamurthy Subramanian, govt director on the IMF and a former chief financial adviser to the Modi authorities.

Its use of know-how, together with the creation of greater than 500mn financial institution accounts for the poor, linked with biometric identification through India’s digital ID system Aadhaar, has “helped direct welfare transfers precisely to the beneficiaries and eliminate pilferage to middlemen”, he added.

Rapid financial development has opened the door to the center class for tens — by some measures a whole bunch — of hundreds of thousands of Indians over the previous decade.

According to knowledge from family surveys performed by People Research on India’s Consumer Economy, an Udaipur-based non-profit think-tank, the center class — comprising folks with annual household revenue of Rs500,000-Rs3mn ($6,700-$40,000 at 2020-21 costs) — has been among the many fastest-growing revenue teams since Modi took energy in 2014.

“The top income segment — the rich — has soared from 30mn to 90mn, while 520mn are middle class currently, up from 300mn in 2014,” mentioned Rajesh Shukla, the think-tank’s managing director and chief govt.

Since Modi took energy, his authorities has taken steps to enhance public well being and hygiene, together with a nationwide marketing campaign to construct public bathrooms. Infant mortality has additionally fallen steadily, although the advance predates Modi’s time in workplace. As of 2020, India’s toddler mortality price was decrease than South Africa’s.

While the Modi authorities has presided over a interval of largely excessive development, the economic system has failed to create enough jobs. Unemployment — which has particularly hit the nation’s youth, the world’s largest inhabitants of younger folks — figured prominently in hard-fought state elections in 2023 and will probably be a degree of assault for Modi’s opponents on this yr’s election for the decrease home of parliament.

The jobless price has barely budged throughout Modi’s time in workplace and exceeded 10 per cent in October for the primary time for the reason that pandemic, in accordance with the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, which produces India’s most-cited unemployment figures. Among younger folks aged 15-34, the CMIE figures are even worse: unemployment in that group stood at 45.4 per cent in 2023.

Some economists — in addition to the Modi authorities itself — say the CMIE knowledge is insufficient and like to quote unemployment figures gathered by India’s statistics ministry in its Periodic Labour Force Survey, which show a decline in jobless charges.

But in a rustic the place hundreds of thousands work in menial or low-quality jobs, different analysts say India’s unemployment numbers can’t be trusted in any respect. Ashoka Mody, visiting professor of worldwide financial coverage at Princeton University and creator of the scathing financial historical past India Is Broken, calls the official unemployment numbers “a meaningless statistic in the Indian context”, arguing that it hides an even bigger drawback of underemployment.

Women account for a smaller proportion of the labour power than when Modi took energy in 2014. India’s feminine labour power participation price fell from 25 per cent in 2014 to 24 per cent in 2022, decrease than regional neighbours Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Economists have mentioned getting extra girls into work would increase India’s development — by as much as 1.5 per cent, in accordance with one World Bank estimate — however questions of safety and social strain forestall many from doing so.

“One problem is the availability of jobs, and the availability of jobs where women feel safe outside the home,” mentioned Swati Narayan, affiliate professor at OP Jindal Global University and creator of Unequal, a e book about why India lags behind its south Asian neighbours in social and financial improvement. “In India, there are a lot of taboos about women going outside to work.”

Spending on roads, railways and different infrastructure has surged beneath Modi and has been an engine of financial development. India plans to spend Rs5tn, or 1.7 per cent of GDP, on capital expenditure for constructing roads and railways, up from 0.4 per cent of GDP in 2014, in accordance with calculations based mostly on the FT’s evaluation of Union Budget knowledge.

Data compiled by CMIE additionally level to a development growth since Modi took workplace, with India including greater than 10,000km of roads annually since 2018.

“This is something that this government has done very well — lots of road and rail network construction,” mentioned Rajan on the University of Chicago.

India has boasted of its success in bringing almost 1bn folks on-line, selling its public digital infrastructure as a mannequin for different creating international locations.

The Aadhaar system of digital IDs started beneath Modi’s predecessors in a Congress-led authorities however has been delivered to life throughout his tenure and parlayed right into a full-fledged digital funds ecosystem, dubbed the India Stack. 

The drive to convey extra Indians on-line was supported by a proliferation of low cost, largely made-in-India smartphones, which greater than 60 per cent of Indians now carry. According to India’s authorities, the worth of digital transactions has grown 70 per cent over the previous 5 years, from Rs1,962tn within the 2017-18 fiscal yr to Rs3,355tn in 2022-23.

India prides itself on its globally linked info know-how sector, with a bunch of home and overseas firms clustered in southern India, particularly round Bengaluru and Hyderabad, making the nation the “back office of the world”.

But India is falling brief on analysis and improvement spending. Its share of the economic system has dropped beneath Modi to lower than 0.7 per cent of GDP, a decrease price than that of another Brics nation and much under the roughly 5 per cent of GDP spent by a few of the world’s greatest R&D centres, led by South Korea and Israel.

While many financial indicators have improved, democracy watchdog teams have downgraded India’s rankings on primary freedoms over the previous 10 years.

The BBC’s India head workplace and Indian information web site NewsClick had been raided in 2023, and journalists from different organisations have confronted legal fees or jail time in what watchdog teams describe as a crackdown on free expression.

India’s press freedom rating in accordance with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) dropped to 161 in 2023, down from 140 in 2014 and solely three locations larger than Russia, which not like India can not credibly declare to be a democracy.

Defenders of the Modi authorities’s file have questioned the reliability of rankings on human rights and civil liberties compiled by RSF, Freedom House and different teams, whereas some Indian civil society teams have argued {that a} free press — together with an impartial enterprise press — is essential not simply to defending Indian democracy however its economic system, too.

“The reason you move to ‘China plus one’ is because of the undemocratic and opaque power structure in China,” mentioned Yamini Aiyar, chief govt of the Centre for Policy Research think-tank. “If India loses this piece, it will have huge repercussions in the long run.”