NEW DELHI: India posted a better-than-expected 7.8% GDP growth in the first quarter of financial year 2026-27. However, economists Surjit Bhalla and Montek Singh Ahluwalia say India’s dream of being a developed nation by 2047 will require much more than just a few quarters of strong growth.
Two of India’s best-known economists have expressed doubts that India will be able to become a developed economy by 2047. They say that a much higher rate of growth would be needed to achieve the target.
India’s Viksit Bharat 2047 vision aims to transform the country into a developed economy by the centenary of its Independence, with higher incomes, better living standards and broad-based economic development. The Viksit Bharat 2047 Vision is the official national policy agenda of the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Economists Surjit Bhalla and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, while differing on some aspects of India’s economic performance in a recent show on India Today TV, arrived at broadly the same conclusion about the government’s Viksit Bharat goal. They both believe that India needs a substantially higher and sustained growth trajectory to become a developed economy by 2047.
“I am still completely of the view that Viksit Bharat by 2047 is not happening,” Bhalla, former IMF Executive Director for India, said recently on Rajdeep Sardesai’s Roundtable on GDP on India Today TV.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, was more cautious in his formulation of the 2047 vision, but reached a similar conclusion.
“If you ask whether we are on track to achieve our long-term objective of Viksit Bharat, the short answer is — not yet,” he said, adding, “We need a much higher growth rate in order to do that.”
The assessment comes even as India’s economy recorded 7.8% growth in the latest quarter, a number that triggered a political debate over the reliability of the new GDP series and revisions to earlier data.
But the economists’ argument is not that the 7.8% figure is fake.
In fact, Bhalla, Ahluwalia and economist Neelkanth Mishra — who was also a part of the roundtable on GDP numbers on India Today TV — broadly rejected the claim that India’s GDP numbers had been politically manipulated. Mishra is the Executive Director at the World Bank, representing India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka.
The more important question, according to the economists’ assessment, is what the growth number says about India’s ability to sustain rapid expansion over the next two decades.
Surjit Bhalla said the latest data had changed one part of his earlier assessment because India’s investment-to-GDP ratio had risen sharply to around 34%. Bhalla had earlier flagged that FDI in India was in the negative, meaning investments were outbound.
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