Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants India to become an advanced nation by 2047, exactly a hundred years after Independence. He came to power in 2014 promising double-digit economic growth in India, which is what he had achieved when he was the chief minister of Gujarat. Ironically, it was the previous government of Manmohan Singh, which over its tenure of 10 years had achieved a 10 per cent average annual growth rate.

But the Singh government dissolved into a miasma of scams and corruption. Growth in 2014, its last year in office, was only about 6 per cent. This is about the average annual growth rate that Modi has been able to achieve in his own 10 years in office. For the purposes of our analysis, the benchmark advanced country is presumed to be the United States. The United States current nominal GDP per capita (taken as an average of IMF and World Bank figures) is about $90,000.

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Because the US economy is utilized as the basis to calculate PPP (purchasing power parity, which takes into account cost of living), its PPP GDP per capita is also $90,000. It is assumed for this analysis that the US GDP per capita will stay the same, i.e. $90,000 in 2047. India’s current nominal GDP per capita is $2,500, and its PPP GDP per capita is $11,000. If India grows at its current growth rate of 6.5 per cent, then its nominal GDP per capita in 2047 will be approximately $10,000. Its PPP GDP per capita will be nearly $ 44,000. Clearly, a 6.5........

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