Of course if India can maintain the current growth trajectory for another couple of decades, and doesn’t fall into the middle income trap, that will change. But Nehru really fucked us all over. If he hadn’t become infatuated with socialism, India would already be on the precipice of being a developed country.
There's 2 middle income traps.
1) the actual middle income trap, failing to move up value chain
2) the byproduct, traps population to middle income
India has the sheer population to pass through 1) eventually.
Ironically the byproduct of sheer population means they will unlikely pass 2).
Middle income trap logic breaks part for large countries.
There's a reason why bottom 40 quantile of PRC, i.e. 600m are still low income. Even the most favourable geopolitical developing conditions couldn't uplift 1.4B because there simply aren't enough middle/high income opportunities for that many bodies. With labour saving tech hollowing out manufacturing and ai hollowing out services, India trending towards 1.6B people is going to be extra fucked in the per capita game. Again that doesn't mean India couldn't eventually replicate PRC in sheer economic chains and potential, it just means they'll be governing a country with 60/70/80% poor with vast gini inequality between modern india and subsistent india where extra pop = more farm land dilution = potentially worse calorie security because inefficient farming = jobs programs > food security.
AKA PRC demographers nightmare scenario that triggered family planning / one child policy that just barely dodged 2)... PRC more or less high income now, and certainly will be as old-poor dies and denominator converge towards young-rich. India will simply be saddled with too much old-poor, and young-poor that the young-rich will not meaningfully skew the per capita math. But on the other hand, per capita matters less than ability to generate abundance and I think/hope if India may meander their way to it.
Doesn't help you to buy a Macbook, say, if you'll need to save up for 5 years. It holds lots of intelligent people back.
And it's not just about intelligence. It's about global economic opportunities. But it's good to know that food can be produced to feed an entire family for $5 in 2026, somewhere in the world. I might go stay in Bangalore or Goa for a while lol.
