Times of Better Bharat

The pitch, and the figures behind it

The Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal, used a 27 September address to highlight growing global trade and investment opportunities in Uttar Pradesh, according to a Press Information Bureau release. A separate PIB release the same day set out the India Maritime Insurance Pool.

Foreign direct investment, net inflows, was US$39.1 billion in 2025, against a GDP of US$3.96 trillion in the same year, both World Bank figures. Growth was 7.6% per year in 2025 (World Bank). External debt stock was US$716.5 billion in 2024 (World Bank), and consumer price inflation ran at 2.4% per year in 2025 on World Bank / MoSPI data.

Logistics: the figure that moved

The World Bank's Logistics Performance Index ranked India 38th of 139 countries in 2023, up six places from 44th in 2018 and sixteen from 54th in 2014. India placed 22nd on international shipments, 47th on infrastructure and 48th on logistics competence, and the stated target is a top-25 place by 2030. A later change to the index's methodology means it no longer produces a single overall score, so the 2023 placing may not be comparable with future editions.

The ranking that has been retired

India's final position in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business index was 63rd of 190 countries in 2020, up 14 places on 2019. The World Bank stopped publishing the index in September 2021 after an audit found that leadership had pressured staff to alter the 2018 and 2020 rankings. The 63rd place is six years old and its publisher has withdrawn it. It is still quoted routinely at investment events.

The debt disagreement

The International Monetary Fund puts general government gross debt — Centre and states combined, on the definition used for debt-sustainability analysis — at 83.4% of GDP in 2026, down from a peak near 89% in 2020. That figure is contested in public debate. The Union Budget's central-government number is about 55.6% for FY2026-27. The two are not contradictory: they cover different entities, and quoting either without saying which is the error.

What would have to change

Customs clearance, port turnaround and contract enforcement sit with Union ministries and with the state governments that control land, power connections and local approvals. India's logistics measurement improved across three World Bank surveys spanning more than one Union government. The direction of travel is real, and so is the distance between a top-25 ambition and 38th place out of 139.

Corruption perceptions

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, released on 10 February 2026, ranked India 91st of 182 countries with a score of 39, up five places from 96th (score 38) in 2024. India remains below the global average score of 42, ahead of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and behind China (43) and Bhutan (71). Some trackers still describe the index as covering 180 countries; the 2025 edition covered 182. It is a perceptions index — it measures expert and business assessments, not prosecutions.

Governance

The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2025 place India at +0.50 on government effectiveness, -0.13 on rule of law, -0.15 on voice and accountability, -0.17 on regulatory quality, -0.28 on control of corruption and -0.61 on political stability and absence of violence, on a scale running from -2.5 to +2.5. Three of the six sit below zero. Effectiveness is the strongest of the six.

Democracy

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index ranked India 41st of 167 countries, up five from 46th in 2022, and classifies it a 'flawed democracy', tied with Poland. The score peaked at 7.92 in 2014, when India was 27th, and fell to 6.61 in 2020, when it was 53rd. V-Dem's 2025 indices put India at 0.38 on electoral democracy and 0.26 on liberal democracy, both on a 0-1 scale, with judicial checks on government at 0.67 and freedom of expression at 0.46.

Press freedom

The World Press Freedom Index for 2026, released by Reporters Without Borders on 30 April, ranked India 157th of 180 countries with a score of 31.96, down six places from 151st in 2025 and inside RSF's 'very serious' band. RSF cites violence against journalists, concentrated ownership and the use of defamation and national-security law. The Indian government has publicly disputed RSF's methodology and sample size, and that dispute belongs in the same breath as the number.

Representation

V-Dem puts women's political participation at 0.71 on a 0-1 scale. The Inter-Parliamentary Union's figure is that women hold 13.8% of lower-chamber seats — the Lok Sabha. A high participation score and a low seat share are not contradictory; they measure different things.

What would move these

Perception indices follow investigations, prosecutions and asset recovery, which sit with anti-corruption bodies and the courts. Press-freedom scores follow the use of criminal law against journalists, a matter for governments and the judiciary. Seat shares are decided by parties and Parliament. The Democracy Index's own history — a peak in 2014, a trough in 2020, a partial recovery since — spans more than one Union government; none of these measures turns on a single year.

The meetings

A two-day national conference on Rabi Campaign 2026 begins in New Delhi on 28 September, according to a Press Information Bureau release. The same day, the Union Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh is to launch a livestock insurance portal in the capital, PIB said separately.

The nutrition numbers

The 2025 Global Hunger Index, published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, ranked India 102nd of 123 countries with a score of 25.8, inside its 'serious' band. That is an improvement on 2024, when India was 105th of 127 with a score of 27.3 — a rise of three places. The components for India include child wasting at 18.7%, among the highest rates in the report, stunting at 32.9% and undernourishment at 12.0%. The Indian government has formally contested the index's methodology, and the figure should be read with that dispute attached.

What a Rabi campaign can move

Rabi sowing decides the wheat, gram and oilseed output that arrives at procurement and in the open market. Wasting and stunting are only partly a food-supply outcome; they also track sanitation, maternal health and infant feeding. The campaign runs on the agriculture calendar. Nutrition outcomes depend on nutrition and food programmes run separately from it.

What would have to change

India's score moved from 27.3 to 25.8 between the 2024 and 2025 editions, inside a band the report itself calls serious. Wasting at 18.7% is the component that would have to fall fastest for the score to shift materially, and wasting responds to maternal nutrition and infant feeding more than to procurement volumes. The bodies that can move it are the Union and state governments that run irrigation, sanitation, procurement and child-nutrition programmes — a set of responsibilities that has outlasted several governments, as has the ranking.

The station

The Union Home and Cooperation Minister, Amit Shah, inaugurated ₹1,472 crore of development works at Sabarmati railway station in Ahmedabad on 27 September and flagged off the country's first LNG train, according to a Press Information Bureau release.

The toll

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways data record 1,83,434 road accident deaths a year in 2025 — the highest absolute number of any country, roughly 11% of the global total, ahead of China and the United States. Deaths rose 25.5% from 1,46,133 in 2015, while reported crashes rose only 2.4% over the same period, which means the typical crash became markedly deadlier. For 2023 the ministry recorded 4,80,583 accidents and 4,62,825 people injured.

What has not moved

The rise from 1,46,133 deaths in 2015 to 1,83,434 in 2025 spans more than one Union government at the Centre, and the lever most often cited for it — enforcement and road design — sits mainly with state governments and municipal bodies. The ministry publishes the national series. Vehicle standards, speed enforcement, ambulance response and trauma care are divided between the Centre and the states, and the count has kept rising through that division.

The other half of the ledger

Sabarmati's ₹1,472 crore of works and the LNG train change how people and freight move. The road figures come from the same ministry's annual series but a different mode, and they have moved in one direction: 4,80,583 recorded accidents in 2023 and 1,83,434 deaths in 2025. The bodies that could bend that line are the state transport departments that enforce and the municipal bodies that build, working to standards set at the Centre.

The frame matters

India is first in the world in absolute road deaths. That placing is not a comparison against a small field: it is the top of a global count in which the country carries roughly a ninth of the world's road fatalities. Reporting the number plainly, and asking which agency holds each lever, is the only way the figure changes.

The push

The Union minister Jitendra Singh said nanomedicine would advance the next generation of preventive medicine and personalised healthcare, according to a Press Information Bureau release. The Prime Minister highlighted the youth-led momentum of the 'Nasha Mukt Yuva Abhiyan', or drug-free youth campaign, in a separate release, and the text of the 138th episode of Mann Ki Baat was published on 27 September. These are health and prevention announcements. The outcome figures are separate, and some are dated.

Health outcomes

Life expectancy at birth was 72.2 years in 2024, on World Bank data. Under-five mortality — the share of children who die before their fifth birthday — was 3.6%, the most recent figure available from UN IGME, which dates to 2019 and is therefore old.

The development score

The UNDP's Human Development Index, in the Human Development Report 2025 released on 6 May 2025 using 2023 data, ranked India 130th of 193 countries with a score of 0.685. That is up from 133rd (0.676) the previous year, still inside the 'medium human development' band and just below the 0.700 threshold for 'high'. Inequality cuts India's score by 30.7%, the steepest discount among its neighbours. China ranked 78th.

Wellbeing

The World Happiness Report 2026, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre on 20 March 2026, ranked India 116th of 147 countries with a score of 4.54 — up two places from 118th in 2025 and from 126th in 2024. It measures self-reported life evaluation on a 0-10 ladder through the Gallup World Poll. Nepal (99th) and Pakistan (104th) placed higher; Bangladesh (127th) and Sri Lanka (134th) lower. Finland was first for a ninth year. It is a survey of how people rate their own lives, not an income measure.

What would move it

Life expectancy and the HDI move with health systems, nutrition and sanitation, and delivery sits largely with state governments and municipal bodies working under national programmes. The 30.7% inequality discount is the sharper number here: the average score conceals the spread beneath it, and distribution is the part that programmes can change.

The fuel switch

Amit Shah launched India's first LNG train from Sabarmati railway station in Ahmedabad on 27 September, a Press Information Bureau release said. It is a change of fuel on the rail network. On the wider energy and air-quality ledger, the grid is greening faster than the air is clearing.

The grid

Renewables supplied 24.1% of India's electricity generation in 2025, according to Ember and the Energy Institute, via Our World in Data. Solar generation alone was 196 TWh, on Energy Institute data via the same source. Roughly a quarter of generation now comes from renewable sources — a share, not a majority.

The air

IQAir's 2025 World Air Quality Report, its eighth, ranked India sixth of 143 countries on population-weighted PM2.5, at 48.9 µg/m³ — close to ten times the World Health Organization guideline of 5. That is a one-place improvement on 2024, when India was fifth at 50.6. Delhi remained the world's most polluted capital at 82.2 µg/m³, itself a three-year low.

The contested index

The 2026 Environmental Performance Index, published by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, placed India 176th of 177 countries with a score of 22.46 — second from last, ahead only of Laos. The figure is disputed. Yale cites air quality, coal dependence and weak biodiversity protection, but India's ten-year change in score is positive at +7.47, and India's Environment Ministry rejected the 2022 edition outright as methodologically unsound. The trajectory on this index runs from 141st in 2016 to 176th in 2026.

What would change it

Ambient PM2.5 is driven by coal generation, vehicles, industry, construction dust and crop burning. The Union environment ministry, state pollution control boards and municipal administrations are the bodies that set and enforce limits. On the record above, India is adding renewable generation and cleaner rail fuel while its measured air remains among the worst in the world — and the same mix has been reported under successive governments.