India is an economic loser in 21st century among the top 4 economies

Maddison project database (MPD) is a famous source of real GDP data for the whole world. For example, it provides data for 1 A.C. The World Bank gives real GDP PPP estimates for 2023 with China, USA, India, and Russia as the four largest economies. Let’s compare real GDP per capita for these 4 countries as presented by the MPD (2023 version). Figure 1 presents the evolution of 4 curves and definitely shows the overall dominance of the USA with $58,487 in 2022. Inida is the last among these four with just $7,766. The long term evolution includes many periods of economic suppression of India and China by the UK, USA, France and so on. 

Figure 1. Evolution of real GDP per capita (MPD) 

The most recent period of relatively free development, say the 21st century, in all studied countries can be best presented by the cumulative growth of real GDP per capita. Instead of presenting just the difference in the levels between 2022 and 2000, we show in Figure 2 the cumulative growth well illustrating the economic events in the 21st century. Overall, Russia has been showing the highest growth in GDP per capita, i.e. the most efficient economic growth (looks like a big problem for the USA as the “leader of free world”?). China and the USA show similar figures likely becase they are economically and financially connected too strong to have different growth rates. India is by far the loser between the 4. 

Figure 2. Cumulative growth in real GDP pc since 2000. 

Something is wrong in the economic and financial systems in India. Of course, Russia has a long history of free developement to be able to structure own economy in an efficient way. China has been the US factory since the 1970s and has adopted the main systematic approaches of the US with Asain specificity. From Figure2, India has big problems and they seem to stay longer as the trend in the real GDP pc is linear with much lower slope as for the other 3 countries. Essentially, the gap has been growing in the 21st century. 

Russia leads so far in the personal pocket growth in the 21st century – $16,000 is added in each pocket to buy and to save. China evolves at a constant rate and the USA is prone to economic crisus and pandemic more than the others.