India has built substantial economic foundations over the past decade through physical infrastructure expansion, digital public infrastructure transformation, financial inclusion, and improved state delivery capabilities. According to reports from NDTV Profit, digital payments have become integral to ordinary commerce, while roads, highways, railways, and logistics networks have altered business possibilities and community access. These infrastructure investments have lowered several barriers to participation and created capacities whose full economic returns will emerge over time. The foundation has proven resilient, with India maintaining robust and resilient economic growth between 2010 and 2025, transforming it into one of the world's fast-growing major economies. India's growth started strong at 8.5% in 2010, dipped during the next four years because of global and domestic tightening, but rebounded soon. Real GDP growth in the country hovered around 8.3% in 2015-2016, which shrank during the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by a historic post-lockdown rebound of nearly 10% in 2021. For the period 2022-2025, India on average registered a more than 7% economic growth.
The distinction between wealth and productive wealth requires careful consideration in India's economic development. As reported by NDTV Profit, gold demand in India during the September quarter of 2026 was 29% lower than a year earlier, even as the value of spending increased by 3%. Higher prices meant consumers spent more rupees while purchasing less gold, illustrating how asset values can rise while household purchasing power changes differently. A strong economy needs investment and well-functioning asset markets, but its enduring strength rests on productivity, incomes, and the capacity to create value. The Indian experience demonstrates that rising employment, particularly among women, played a significant role behind the impressive poverty reduction record of India during the last decade. Between 2014 and 2024, over 17 crore jobs were created in India, amounting on average 1.7 crore jobs per year. Unemployment in the country dropped from 7.6% in 2015 to 4.2% in 2025, with the female worker population ratio seeing a notable structural upward shift, nearly doubling from 22% in the mid-2010s to more than 40% in 2025.
India's economic transformation faces a critical challenge as the World Bank's Prosperity Gap indicator stands at 4.9, measured against the global benchmark of $28 per person per day (in 2021 purchasing power parity terms). This means that the average consumption levels across India's population will need to increase by a factor of 4.9 to reach the desired standard of prosperity. According to the World Bank brief, 63.9% of Indians between $4.20 and $8.30 constitute the largest share of the 4.9 gap, indicating that many who have escaped poverty require their incomes to rise three to seven folds to achieve prosperity. In 2023, an estimated 2.6% of Indians lived below $3.00 a day (extreme poverty line), 16.1% below $4.20 (lower-middle-income line), and 80.0% below $8.30 (upper-middle-income line). The brief reveals that real earnings are broadly flat, employment growth is concentrated in low-productivity work, and youth unemployment rose from 14.6% to 15.9% (Q1 FY2026 to Q1 FY2027).
Inclusive growth must be central to India's economic transition, as reported by NDTV Profit. More women entering the workforce, young people from smaller towns accessing quality skills, small enterprises gaining formal market access, and rural producers securing better consumer links all enlarge India's productive base. Inclusive growth expands participation while creating a broader and more resilient market for goods and services, with economic value reflected in both greater participation and improved household opportunity. The Indian approach to growth was not only to achieve sustained growth, but also to make it pro-poor by expanding productive employment. Following this strategy, the relevant approach for developing countries may be employment-led growth, rather than growth-led employment. India has shown that the dual objective of high growth and high employment can simultaneously be achieved, with manufacturing and construction now employing about 26% of the Indian workforce and services accounting for the remaining 33%, while agriculture still accounts for 41% of the workforce though its relative dominance has slowly declined.
The economic story of a nation is inseparable from people's development, according to NDTV Profit analysis. Education, healthcare, nutrition, skills, and employability influence workforce quality and citizen choices. India's demographic potential will deliver full value when young people are equipped to participate in a changing economy and find productive work. Household financial security is another important measure, as rising incomes need to translate into capacity to save, manage expenses, afford healthcare, and invest in children's education. The Indian experience indicates that a major consumption growth shift from urban to rural areas can boost consumption in the overall economy, particularly in countries where the majority of the population lives in rural areas. In India, driven by major shifts toward non-farm employment (now comprising 50% of rural income), real rural income outpaced urban wage growth and that was the major driving force for the rapid consumption growth in India. The culture of 'premiumisation' was evident, with the share of non-essential or discretionary spending in average Indian household budgets rising dramatically from 15% historically to 36% by 2025.
