The good news is India is the fastest-growing major economy in the world, on course to overtake Germany and Japan in the next five years in aggregate GDP. It will become the third-largest global economy after the United States and China. However, there is a concern that the benefits of fast GDP growth are being undermined by low job growth and an accompanying pro-rich bias.
Unemployment among young people with graduate degrees is at an all-time high of 29 percent, and overall youth unemployment is hovering around 10 percent. This has prompted some young Indians to travel to war zones in search of employment and higher income opportunities.
Rapid economic growth in the past two decades has contributed to an unprecedented fall in poverty. The poverty headcount ratio, which indicates the proportion of the population living below the poverty line, fell from 37 percent in 2004-05 to 22 percent in 2011-12. This pulled 140 million people out of poverty. Recent estimates by India’s Knowledge Commission show that multidimensional poverty in India declined from 29.17 percent in 2013-14 to 11.28 percent in 2022-23, with about 250 million people moving out of deprivation.
