5 Charts That Explain India

As India heads to the polls later this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party are touting their successes on the campaign trail. “This is India’s moment,” Modi declared in a rare interview last December. But do the numbers tell the same story?

As you peruse Foreign Policy’s Spring 2024 print issue, here are five charts that may help contextualize the scale of India’s challenges—and how it compares with its peers on key indicators. 

1. The World’s Most Populous Country—and Growing

Last year, India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous country. India’s population is projected to grow for another four decades, after which aging demographics will lead to a decline. China has already peaked. By the end of the century, its population could be a tad over half its current size.

2. GDP Per Capita Remains Low

India often ranks as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. It has a long way to go: GDP per capita clocks in at just $2,411 per year, a number that compares poorly with other emerging economies such as China, Mexico, and South Africa. (South Korea’s growth story is instructive here: While it had a similar per capita income in the 1970s, the average South Korean today earns more than 13 times as much as the average Indian.) 

3. Young Indians Need Jobs

With nearly half of its population under the age of 25, India is an overwhelmingly young country. New Delhi will need to work harder to make this a demographic dividend. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high at 17.83 percent. 

Watch a live discussion about the magazine’s India issue with editor-in-chief Ravi Agrawal here.

4. Internet Usage Is Exploding

The rapid proliferation of cheap smartphones has led to an unprecedented internet boom in India in the last decade. Some 866 million Indians used the internet in 2023, up from a little over 200 million in 2014. More will surely come online as access improves. From Manali to Mumbai, vendors across most Indian cities are increasingly turning to digital payment options such as Paytm and GPay. 

5. Women Are Underemployed

It’s a generally held belief that as countries develop, more women enter the workforce. India is a strange paradox here. Despite Modi’s campaign promises to empower women, only 28 percent of Indian women were formally employed in 2022, lagging 9 percentage points behind neighboring Bangladesh. China and Kenya have female labor force participation rates of 61 percent and 72 percent, respectively.