Economy

How India earns, spends, grows, borrows, and saves.

19 explainers, and 8 still being built. Every chart comes with its data and its source.

Latest How innovative is India? India has climbed from the bottom half of the Global Innovation Index to its top third since 2015. The strength is in outputs and scale; the weakness is per person. 18 figures
Has India ended poverty? At $3 a day, about ₹58/day in 2021 PPP rupees, India's poverty rate is down to 5.3%. At $4.20, about ₹82/day, it is still 23.9%. The line you choose changes the answer. 31 figures Has India’s industrial policy surge paid off? India nearly doubled protective industrial policy measures after COVID. The World Bank’s new report shows the tariffs are cutting imports, but the bill falls on households, and the promised manufacturing jobs remain elusive. 2 figures How big is India's economy? India produces about ₹357 lakh crore worth of goods and services, making it the 5th largest economy. Divide that output across 1.4 billion people and the average is only about ₹2.5 lakh a year. 13 figures How competitive is India's trade with the world? Despite $445 billion in merchandise exports, India's share of world exports is just 1.7%, lower than in 1948. Tariffs remain high, and export complexity lags Asian peers. 15 figures How does India borrow? RBI/IDH gives the granular bank-credit map. BIS and IMF add the wider household-debt and credit-system context without replacing the Indian loan-product data. 17 figures How does India trade with the world? From $1.3 bn in 1948 to $445 bn in exports by 2025, India's trade has multiplied. But a persistent goods deficit of $308 bn is offset by services and remittances. 10 figures How much does India spend on research, and is it enough? No, it's far below global leaders and its own 2% target. Yet India ranks third in research papers and sixth in patents. Here's how that paradox holds together. 22 figures How much money did Indians send abroad under RBI's LRS? Travel dominates RBI's purpose table, but it is broader than holidays. Family support, education and investment make this a more complicated ledger. 11 figures Is foreign money really fleeing India? What FDI and FII numbers actually mean. India’s net FDI dropped from $43 billion in FY20 to under $1 billion in FY25, but gross inflows surged to an all-time high of $81 billion. The gap is repatriation and Indian firms investing abroad. 20 figures Is India a services superpower? Services earned $415 billion in 2025, just shy of $445 billion from goods, and India's share of world services exports is 4.4% – more than double its goods share. 6 figures The Gulf shut. What did the 2026 oil shock actually cost India? India paid about $22.8 billion extra for the same four months of crude, and its cooking gas imports nearly halved. Retail petrol inflation was 7.5%. The difference went onto the government's books. 14 figures · data through 2026-07 What does India's lower-middle-income label really measure? India is an economic giant because its output adds up across 1.46 billion people. Its income label divides national income by those people and converts it with the World Bank's Atlas method. The result is valid, narrow and easy to mistake for a verdict on Indian life. 15 figures What does India's vehicle boom really look like? VAHAN registrations show India motorised at astonishing scale after 2003. But registrations are not sales, and the road filled mostly with two-wheelers while diesel faded, EVs arrived and income explained only part of the ride. 23 figures Who actually pays income tax in India? The zero-tax majority is not evasion but a deliberate policy choice that keeps lifting the nil-tax ceiling. The burden rests on a tiny apex. 10 figures Who does India trade with? India's exports reached $291 bn in manufactures in 2024, but a yawning deficit with China and a surge in fuel imports shape the story. 12 figures Why does everything keep getting more expensive? Inflation is normal, permanent, and uneven. This page uses 30 charts to explain what is happening to your money, why, and what you can actually do about it. 30 figures How much foreign investment did India attract? What 56 years of data show. India received $38.9 billion of foreign direct investment in 2025 and climbed to eleventh in the world. That was equivalent to 3.1 per cent of the year's fixed investment. The high-water mark, in 2008, was 10.3 per cent. 15 figures How much room do Indian states really have in their budgets? In 2023-24, states spent about Rs 40 lakh crore on running expenditure and Rs 7.5 lakh crore on capital outlay. Transfers supplied about 42% of revenue, interest and pensions took about a quarter, and education's budget share was lower than in the early 1990s. 20 figures

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