India

India: strong, sustained growth, 1980–2025

Balance-of-payments crisis in 1991 forced sweeping liberalization that opened India's economy to trade and investment, unleashing a long services- and technology-led expansion alongside a much slower transformation of agriculture and manufacturing. Between 1980 and 2025, India's GDP per capita grew from $271 to $2,702 (current US$), a compound annual growth rate of 5.2% — strong, sustained growth. Annual GDP growth averaged 6.0% with a year-to-year standard deviation of 2.6 points, reflecting relatively stable macroeconomic conditions. Structurally, agriculture's share of the economy moved from 34.4% to 16.2% of GDP (a classic decline as the economy industrialized/modernized), while services rose from 33.8% to 49.3% of GDP, underscoring a shift toward a services-driven economy. On human development, life expectancy rose from 53.6 to 72.2 years, while tertiary school enrollment moved from 5.0% to 34.4%, while the urban population share grew from 23.5% to 35.7%.

What this growth cost: Growth was not without cost: per-capita CO2 emissions rose from 0.44 to 2.17 tonnes CO2e per person; income inequality (Gini index) narrowed from 27.2 to 25.5; the poverty headcount ratio fell from 50.9% to 5.3%.