01/03/25, India needs to grow at 7.8 per cent on an average during next 22 years to achieve the status of Viksit Bharat by 2047, a World Bank report, released on Friday, said. Though the report said that such a rate is possible, it needs reforms and their implementation to be as ambitious as the target itself.

 “Lessons from countries like Chile, Korea and Poland show how they have successfully made the transition from middle- to high-income countries by deepening their integration into the global economy,” World Bank Country Director Auguste Tano Kouame said here. “India can chart its own path by stepping up the pace of reforms and building on its past achievements,” he said.

To achieve this goal, India would require reforms in financial sector as well as in land and labour market, the World Bank said in its India Country Memorandum titled ‘Becoming a High-Income Economy in a generation’. Recognising India‘s fast pace of growth averaging 6.3 per cent between 2000 and 2024, the report notes that India‘s past achievements provide the foundation for its future ambitions.

However, “reaching the ambitious target of becoming a high-income economy by 2047 will not be possible in a business-as-usual scenario... for India to become a high-income economy by 2047, its GNI (gross national income) per capita would have to increase by nearly 8 times over the current levels; growth would have to accelerate further and to remain high over the next two decades, a feat that few countries have achieved,” the report said.

Further, it said that to meet this target, given the less conducive external environment, India would need to not only maintain ongoing initiatives but in fact expand and intensify reforms.

The report evaluates three scenarios for India’s growth trajectory over the next 22 years. The scenario which enables India to reach high-income status in a generation, requires achieving faster and inclusive growth across states, increasing total investment from current 33.5 per cent of GDP to 40 per cent (both in real terms) by 2035 and increasing overall labour force participation from 56.4 per cent to above 65 per cent; and accelerating overall productivity growth.

“India can take advantage of its demographic dividend by investing in human capital, creating enabling conditions for more and better jobs and raising female labour force participation rates from 35.6 per cent to 50 per cent by 2047,” said Emilia Skrok and Rangeet Ghosh, co-authors of the report. 

The report said that over the past decades, India has developed at a scale and pace that few would have thought possible. From 2000 to today, in real terms, the economy has grown nearly four-fold, and GDP per capita has almost tripled. Because India grew faster than the rest of the world, its share in the global economy has doubled from 1.6 per cent in 2000 to 3.4 per cent in 2023. India has become the world’s fifth largest economy.

“This remarkable development story also includes a steep decline in extreme poverty, and massive expansion of service delivery and essential infrastructure. Building on these achievements, India has set the ambitious goal of becoming a high-income country by 2047,” the report added.