India as a Developed Country?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech last week listed the nation becoming a developed country in the next 25 years as one of his major goals. Modi admitted that this was a big resolution and data by the UN and the World Bank shows how far India would have to come to achieve this aim by the centennial of its founding in 2047.

While there is no fixed set of rules by which the UN defines developed and developing countries, the economic indicator of per-capita gross national income - which also defines if a nation is high, middle or low income - is a major factor. In this regard, India still has a long way to go. In 2021, GNI per capita stood at just more than $2,000 - up from $440 twenty years ago. This places India much closer to Niger, one of the least developed countries in the world with a annual per-capita GNI of just $590, than to Switzerland, the country with the world's highest GNI at more than $90,000 per inhabitant (not adjusted for purchasing power).

However, there is considerable overlap between developed and developing countries. The country with the lowest GNI per capita that the UN considers developed is Bulgaria, which stood at $10,700 last year. Israel, despite having a per-capita GNI close to that of Germany, is considered a developing country.

India is not included on the UN list of the world's least developed countries like Niger, Bangladesh and Nepal. The latter two countries are scheduled to shed this designation in 2026. Bangladesh's per-capita GNI is now slightly higher than India's, which some observers attribute to the fact that the country is boosting its garment industry in order to provide incomes to large parts of its lower-skilled population, while India has been growing high-skill industries like IT or finance.