The first India
Few countries improved as much as India in twenty years
Development score, 2004 and 2024, 156 countries: income, health, basic services and schooling combined (0–100). Each line is a country. Tap or hover a line.
India’s score rose by 26 points, the eighth-largest gain of 156 countries. Electricity, toilets, child survival and secondary schooling all spread fast. Of India’s neighbours, Nepal, which started lower, rose even faster; Bangladesh almost as fast.
Source: calculated from World Bank WDI. Score averages four dimensions with fixed goalposts: income per person (PPP, log), health (life expectancy, under-5 survival), basic services (electricity, sanitation, water) and secondary enrolment. Method in the Appendix.
What moved
Basic services and schooling rose most; income per person least
India’s four dimension scores, 2004 and 2024 (0–100)
The biggest gains came from things the state can build and connect: power lines, toilets, school places. Income per person, measured on a log scale as in the UN’s Human Development Index, rose least, because tripling a low income still leaves it low.
Source: as above.
The second India
Still in the bottom third: the other half of the same chart
Development score 2024 against 2004, India and its 2004 peers. Above the dashed line means more progress than peers that started at the same level. Tap or hover a dot.
The countries that most resembled India in 2004, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ghana, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, all improved too. India pulled ahead of most of them, but Vietnam and Indonesia, which started ahead, stayed ahead, and Morocco did as well. Rising fast from a low base still left India ranked 104th of 156.
Source: as above. Peers: countries closest to India’s 2004 profile, plus Vietnam.
The paradox
Fifth by size, 143rd per person
A country of 140 crore people can be a large economy while its citizens remain poor. Each success below is paired with a failure measured on the same data, and each pair points to what the next decade of growth should buy.
Source: World Bank WDI, 2024; UNDP Human Development Report 2025.
The map
Every success has a shadow; every pair of them, a remedy
Read across a row: what India built, what it left behind, and how growth could fix both. Below: the deeper fault lines. Click to open.
