"The achievement accomplished by India cannot be minimized": the country overtook France in 2017, is on track to double Japan, and yet never before have so many Indians left the country

India has boasted of having overtaken Japan as the world's fourth-largest economy, but the fruits of its growth remain very unevenly distributed, and millions of people struggle to find stable employment.

At the head of a consulting firm specializing in helping large companies establish themselves abroad, Alouk Kumar praises the astonishing vitality of his sector.

For a long time, the Indian economy relied on its vast service sector, where millions of people worked in low-cost outsourced centers.

But over the last decade, these have given way to centers of excellence where highly skilled employees perform tasks covering IT, data analysis, innovation, design, and more.

Amazon's largest office is located in India, as are 20% of JPMorgan's workforce.

The world's most populous country has become a vast outsourcing hub, now worth $283 billion (€240.5 billion).

Since coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched an infrastructure development program that has boosted India's growth to over 7%, the highest among major economies.

At the end of December, Its government trumpeted that India had become the world's fourth-largest economy.

"Achievement"

A bit hasty: GDP statistics published last month suggest it will take another year to overtake Japan.

Nevertheless, economists agree on its performance: at the beginning of the 21st century, India was absent from the top 10 global economies, while Japan held second place. In 2000, India was only the 13th largest economy in the world by GDP, according to the IMF. As a reminder, India already surpassed France in GDP in 2017.

From Bangalore to Mumbai, luxury buildings and office towers have sprung up like mushrooms. Rising incomes have allowed the emergence of a middle class exceeding 300 million people. Between 2011-12 and 2022-23, the proportion of people living below the poverty line fell from 57.7% to 23.9%, according to the World Bank. But behind this facade, the reality is different. Nearly half of its inhabitants depend on agriculture, and its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is 12 times lower than that of Japan. Taking into account differences in the cost of living, India is close to Namibia or Uzbekistan, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In an affluent suburb of Mumbai, workers queue at a recruitment agency to work abroad. "In India, work is irregular and very poorly paid," laments Sandeep Chaurasia. This 31-year-old welder landed an oil job in Qatar, which will provide enough to finance his brother's studies and save money for his wedding. His case is not unique. "A large part of India's growth is driven by demand from its wealthiest 100 million citizens," explains Bhaskar Chakravorti of Tufts University (USA). In 2024, the total number of Indians living abroad worldwide was approximately 35.42 million, according to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Each year, approximately 2.5 million Indians leave the country, making it, according to the UN, the world's leading country of origin for emigration. Unlike China's industrial boom, Bhaskar Chakravorti points out, service-sector-driven growth in India benefits only a "narrow segment" of the population. Analysts believe India would need 8% annual growth for two decades to become a high-income country. In the short term, the priority is to create quality jobs for the millions of people entering the labor market each year. Morgan Stanley estimates that average growth of 12.2% would be necessary to truly address underemployment. In a village in the state of Maharashtra, about 100 kilometers from Mumbai, the gap between government announcements and daily reality is striking.

At 32, Nitin Gaikwad, who owns a small farm, is forced to work on road construction sites to make ends meet.