5 May 2026, 12:07 PM
5 May 2026, 16:31 PM
Faisal Mahmud
During my 14 months as Minister (Press) at the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, I observed India more from metro rails, trains, buses, provincial roads, and a daily dose of discussions with my colleagues in the diplomatic circle and journalistic peers from the Indian media. Personal travel and official work took me across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. I spent long hours reading newspapers, watching television, speaking with journalists, researchers, and policy professionals in Delhi, and observing how ordinary citizens moved through the economy. The impression was consistent. India possesses enormous capability, but it also carries a deep structural imbalance. It is a country of scale without enough spread and wealth without enough diffusion. And also a country with very large ambitions without sufficient economic architecture.The dominant global story is flattering. India is now the world’s fourth-largest economy, with output above $4 trillion. Growth has often ranged between 6% and 8%. Its stock market has surged. It landed a spacecraft near the Moon’s south pole. Its digital payments network is admired internationally. Western capitals increasingly view India as a democratic counterweight to China. None of this is false. But none of it is sufficient. Behind the aggregate numbers lies a more difficult truth. India’s growth model has become top-heavy.The central weakness is straightforward. India has generated elite wealth, urban enclaves of modern prosperity and globally competitive service industries. It has not generated enough broad middle-income employment. The country moved too quickly toward a service-led economy before completing industrialisation. In doing so, it skipped the stage that, elsewhere, historically created stable mass prosperity: labour-intensive manufacturing at scale.Every year, roughly 10-12 million young, educated Indians enter the workforce. That is comparable to adding a country the size of Belgium to the labour market annually. No nation can absorb such numbers through software parks, finance offices and high-end services alone.
