In September 2022, according to the latest data released by the International Monetary Fund, India, our close neighbor and the world's most populous country, surpassed the United Kingdom, which ruled it for hundreds of years, to become the world's fifth-largest economy.
Qualified to rank above India are only the United States, China, Germany, and Japan.
In other words, more than 70 years after independence, India surpassed all the European powers that had colonized and invaded it in one fell swoop, turning into a serf and singing.
Not only that, but with India's economic development rate much higher than that of Germany and Japan, India's surpassing Japan and Germany, two countries whose GDP is still above it, is also a matter of recent years, if there is no major change.
In 2023, India's GDP totals $3.73 trillion, while Japan is only $500 billion higher at $423 million, and Germany is about the same order of magnitude at $4.42 trillion.
Therefore, India has really risen to prominence, not only surpassing most of the Western powers, but also has a high probability of surpassing Germany and Japan in recent years, ranking third in the world.
It is about to become the third largest economic power in the world, and Britain, France, Italy, Canada, South Korea and other countries are all developed countries after India's total economic output.
In this regard, Indians, who have always been full of confidence and can set off three-foot waves without wind, have naturally become more confident in the face of the objective reality of rapid economic growth and surpassing those of the old powers.
Therefore, when India's economy overtook Britain and became the world's fifth largest economy, not only the ordinary people in India were ecstatic, entrepreneurs sang about India's brilliant economic achievements, and India's senior officials and politicians were also generally full of optimistic aspirations for the future.
For example, on September 3, 2022, the State Bank of India published a report that based on the current growth rate of the Indian economy, India will surpass Germany in 2027, surpass Japan in 2029, and become the world's third largest economy in 2029.
Of course, it is not only the Indian people and major media who are confident, but even India's supreme leader Modi has ambitiously announced India's development goal on India's 75th anniversary: to build India into a developed country by 2047.
Becoming a developed country is the dream shared by almost all developing countries in the world. The reason is not surprising, whether it is economic, political, military or cultural, developed countries are in the forefront of the world, and the comfortable and comfortable life of the people in developed countries makes the eyes of ordinary people in every developing country red.
The yearning for a better life and the expectation of a prosperous and developed country are the common aspirations of every citizen, and it is certainly not surprising that India wants to do so.
However, everyone has a beautiful yearning, but whether the yearning can be realized is a direct test of ability. So, is it possible for India's dream of becoming a developed country to come true? How far is India from the developed world?
First of all, it is worth affirming that the Indian economy has indeed maintained a high rate of development for quite some time. For example, India's National Bureau of Statistics (ONS) released data on the eve of the 2024 general election:
After adjustment, India's gross domestic product, or GDP, will grow by a whopping 8.2 percent from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2024. This figure is far ahead, surpassing not only Western countries such as Europe and the United States, but even China.
Moreover, India's population has surpassed China to become the world's most populous country. This gives India an unrivaled advantage in terms of human resources.
Although India is limited by the universal compulsory education, corruption, caste system and other reasons, India's population size has not completely turned into a demographic dividend.
However, based on a huge amount of data, India still has a huge amount of talent. This is also the reason why after Indians emigrated overseas, a large number of successful people of Indian origin have emerged in all walks of life.
Now, not only is the Silicon Valley of the United States beginning to be occupied by Indian CEOs, but even their former suzerainty has produced its first Indian-origin prime minister.
Obviously, although India is not very popular in all the countries of the world, the success of the Indians proves that there is no problem with the intelligence and ability of the Indians, which is fundamentally different from certain races.
Moreover, since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, a series of reform measures have been implemented, and they have been quite effective.
For example, Modi has carried out large-scale infrastructure construction in the past 10 years, with a series of roads, ports, airports, railways, bridges, dams and other facilities successfully built.
The construction of infrastructure also provides a vital foundation for the development of Indian industry. Modi's other reforms, such as the digital payment system, the abolition of paper money, the digital tax system, and many more, have facilitated the development of Indian society and businesses in India.
Moreover, India has indeed shown excellence in many areas as well. For example, India now has more than 45 per cent of the world's global competence centers, thanks to the predominance of English.
In the post-pandemic era, when Western countries are trying to diversify risks and decouple from China, India, as a country with the same population, is seen as an important alternative to China, which directly brings excellent opportunities for India's industrial development.
However, having these favorable factors does not mean that India can become a developed country.
In fact, if India wants to become a developed country, such as Singapore, Luxembourg, Denmark and other small countries, it can become a developed country by stumbling on one industry and gaining an advantage. As the world's most populous country, if India wants to enter the ranks of developed countries, it is the only way for India to complete industrialization like China, and it is also the only choice.
So, what is the industrial development of India, which has become the world's fifth largest economy?
India, which has always been dissatisfied with China, has not been friendly to China some time ago because of its nature, border conflicts, jealousy, and Western provocation, and Chinese goods and Chinese enterprises in India have also been repeatedly treated unfairly.
Due to India's frequent provocations, some angry domestic netizens also want to treat others in their own way - boycott Indian goods.
However, India, the world's fifth-largest economy, has almost no products in China. Netizens searched all the things in their homes, but they didn't find a single commodity exported from India, the only Indian god oil, which was still fake.
This story actually proves the current situation of India's industrial development: except for the service industry and the pharmaceutical industry, India's industrial development is very scarce, and it is even more different from China, the world's largest industrial country.
Today, more than 50 percent, or half of India's workforce, is still employed in the agricultural sector. More than 90 per cent of workers are employed in the informal sector.
In other words, one of India's greatest strengths, its favorable demographics, large number of young adults, and demographic dividend, has not been brought into play.
India's most abundant human resources are being wasted. As a result, although India has extremely rich human resources, it has many problems, such as serious underemployment and widening gap between the rich and the poor.
Another example is that India's infrastructure has indeed changed a lot through Modi's efforts, but this change is relatively similar to that of India before.
Taking highways as an example, India's Minister of Road Transport and Highways has claimed that India's national highways are 145,000 kilometers long, ranking second in the world after the United States.
This figure is indeed staggering, because it even surpasses the infrastructure madness of China. Moreover, India also claims that the total length of India's roads is as high as 5.6 million kilometers, which is still higher than the total length of China's roads.
Because until the end of 2022, the total length of roads in China is only 5.35 million kilometers. India's infrastructure construction has surpassed China's?
This is obviously impossible, and the reason why India has been able to achieve more road mileage than China is not that India is more able to build, but that India's bottom line is more flexible.
Because, in order to calculate the total mileage of its own roads, India has counted almost all roads, not only cement roads and asphalt roads are counted as roads, but even dirt roads and field roads are counted as roads in India. In this way, the natural mileage far exceeds that of China.
However, such wordplay will not change India's weak infrastructure. Moreover, the biggest disadvantage to the development of India and industry is that there has never been a complete agrarian revolution.
India's land is still under the private control of major families and powers, which means that whether it is building roads or factories, India has one biggest obstacle that cannot be solved: land acquisition.
The difficulty of acquiring land from countless private individuals and completing infrastructure construction is desperate just to think about. This is also the fundamental reason why India's infrastructure construction is difficult today, and it takes years to start building a road at every turn, and land acquisition is too difficult.
India's difficulties don't stop there, as India needs to make up lessons in almost all areas, especially in industrial development. For example, some industry insiders believe that Modi's repeated hopes for Made in India have generally failed.
Because, not only has India's manufacturing industry not achieved the expected goal of creating 100 million jobs for India, but the development of Indian industry has shrunk.
For example, in October 2014, shortly after coming to power, Modi proposed Make in India. At that time, India's manufacturing sector accounted for 15% of India's GDP.
However, after 7 years of development, by 2021, the share of India's manufacturing industry in India's GDP has not only not increased, but has decreased, reaching only 14.1%.
India's made-in-India brand, which wants to boost national pride, is also lackluster internationally. Some Indian economists have estimated that India, with a population of more than one billion, exports about the same amount of manufactured goods as Vietnam.
Not only that, Modi's repeated "Made in India" New Deal has a huge problem, that is: India's big conglomerates have risen and become larger, but the small and medium-sized enterprises that can absorb jobs are being marginalized, and their profits are getting lower and lower, and even gradually bankrupt.
From the moment of independence, India has shown incredible confidence in making India a great power, in the words of India's founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
However, although the goal is good, it cannot be ambitious. China, which is far better developed and more successful in industrial construction than India, has not yet entered the ranks of developed countries after decades of rapid development.
Before China becomes a developed country, the possibility of India becoming a developed country is very small, and once China becomes a developed country, it is indeed difficult to predict whether India, which has always been very strong and even hostile to China, will be able to rise as they hope.