India's Amrit Kaal goal calls for broad trackers

Output per head suggests itself as the yardstick for developed country' status by 2047, but since this does not adequately capture how well people are doing, we need other measures

- 

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi envisioned India as a developed country by 2047 to mark a century of freedom. He called the next 25 years an “Amrit Kaal," a propitious phase for the fulfillment of this ambition. As the emergence of our economy is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for it, output per head would suggest itself as the gauge to adopt. Work published by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently said that for our pie of income to reach a size that today’s World Bank yardstick would slot as ‘high income’ in fiscal 2047-48, it must expand to $35 trillion in nominal value from the $3.4-trillion-odd we expect logged in 2022-23. While volatile inflation and dollar rates could warp the actual story as it pans out, the RBI note sets out a rough pace at which real GDP in Indian rupees would have to grow: an average of 7.6% annually, i.e., without a let-up. This is doable. As theory and Asian Tigers show, economic policy aligned with nothing more