Mint Quick Edit | Let’s not oversell our $4 trillion economy
On Saturday, Niti Aayog CEO B.V.R. Subrahmanyam cited data from the International Monetary Fund to say that India was overtaking Japan this year to become the world’s fourth-largest national economy, with only the US, China and Germany larger.
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“We are a $4 trillion economy as I speak,” he was quoted as saying. To put this in a physical perspective, if this sum were to be stacked up in wads of $1 bills, it would form a stack 437,360km-high—longer than the distance to the Moon.
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This is impressive, like the other marker we frequently highlight: of India being the world’s fastest growing major economy. The country’s heft on the world stage and attraction as an investment destination should grow accordingly.
Also Read: Mint Quick Edit | Can India avoid a middle-income trap?
Yet, by global reckoning, we remain in the lower middle income bracket, which spells a need to keep our signalling balanced. Although the broad idea that developing countries need a special leg-up in everyone’s interest has fallen out of favour in the US, it could survive today’s upheavals.
To sustain and advance this argument multilaterally, we should make it a point to keep showing solidarity with the Global South on the challenge of uplifting livelihoods.
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