Times of Better Bharat

The fifth Kautilya Economic Conclave (KEC 2026), held in New Delhi on the theme 'Resilience in an Era of Transformation', concluded this week, the Press Information Bureau said in a release. ([PIB](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2321899))

The trajectory

India's GDP was US$3.96 trillion in 2025 and grew at 7.6% a year, on World Bank data. GNI per capita on the Atlas method was US$2,760, and GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was 11,748 international dollars. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD))

Consumer price inflation ran at 2.4% a year in 2025, on World Bank and MoSPI figures. The investment rate was 34.6% of GDP and exports of goods and services 22.3% of GDP, both for 2025. Net foreign direct investment inflows were US$40.8 billion in 2025; remittances received were US$150.7 billion; reserves covered 7.85 months of imports; and the current account balance was -0.5% of GDP. External debt stock stood at US$716.5 billion in 2024. Manufacturing was 13.5% of GDP in 2025.

The debt number depends on who is counting

The IMF puts general government gross debt — Centre and states combined, on the definition used for debt-sustainability analysis — at 83.4% of GDP for 2026, down from a 2020 peak near 89%. That figure is marked contested. 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 as 'India's debt' without saying which is a recurring error. World Bank and IMF data for 2018 put central government debt at 46.5% of GDP.

Where the constraint sits

Tax revenue was 6.9% of GDP in 2022, the most recent World Bank figure in this set. Debt service, the investment rate and the external position all sit downstream of how much revenue the state raises and how it spends it. The bodies with the power to change that ratio are the Union and state governments, through the annual Budget and tax policy; the debt ratio follows arithmetically from those choices rather than leading them.

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025, released on 10 February 2026, placed India 91st of 182 with a score of 39 — up five places from 96th and a score of 38 in 2024. The score is still below the index's global average of 42. India is ahead of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh on that table, and behind China (43) and Bhutan (71). Some trackers continue to describe the CPI as covering 180 countries; the 2025 edition covered 182. ([Transparency International](https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi))

Against that, the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index 2025 placed India 86th of 143 with a score of 0.49, down seven places from 2024. ([WJP](https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/downloads/WJPIndex2025.pdf))

Two trackers, different directions

The two results are not necessarily in tension. The CPI aggregates expert and business perceptions of public-sector corruption; the WJP index scores constraints on government, order and security, fundamental rights and other factors. Both are perception-based instruments, and neither is a count of offences.

The Bank's six governance measures

The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2025, on a -2.5 to +2.5 scale: government effectiveness 0.50; rule of law -0.13; voice and accountability -0.15; regulatory quality -0.17; control of corruption -0.28; and political stability and absence of violence -0.61. ([World Bank](https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators))

V-Dem and Freedom House

V-Dem's 2025 indices, published through Our World in Data, score India 0.38 on electoral democracy and 0.26 on liberal democracy, both on a 0–1 scale. Freedom of expression is 0.46 and judicial checks on government 0.67. Women's political participation is 0.71, against 13.8% of Lok Sabha seats held by women on IPU data. On V-Dem's corruption measures, where higher is worse: political corruption 0.68, public sector corruption 0.69, executive corruption 0.69. ([Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/liberal-democracy-index))

Freedom House scores India 31 out of 40 on political rights and 31 out of 60 on civil liberties for 2025. ([Freedom House via Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/civil-liberties-score-fh))

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index for 2023 — now three years old — ranked India 41st of 167, up five from 2022, classified a flawed democracy and tied with Poland. India's score peaked at 7.92 in 2014, when it was 27th, and fell to 6.61 in 2020, when it was 53rd. ([EIU](https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index/))

An index that no longer exists

The World Bank's Ease of Doing Business ranked India 63rd of 190 in 2020, up 14 places on 2019 — its final position before the Bank stopped publishing the index in September 2021, after an audit found leadership had pressured staff to alter the 2018 and 2020 rankings. It is still widely quoted as current. It is six years old, and the index no longer exists. ([World Bank archive](https://archive.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings))

What would have to change

The variables these measures track — judicial constraints, freedom of expression, regulatory quality — are set by statute and by daily practice. The bodies that hold them are the legislatures, the courts and the enforcement agencies, and the CPI's own five-place move shows the perception measures can shift within a single year.

The Prime Minister's Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY) and a parallel push on pulses self-reliance were set out by the Press Information Bureau this week. ([PIB, PMDDKY](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2321910); [PIB, pulses](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2321930))

What the underlying numbers say

Cereal yield was 3,632.5 kilograms per hectare in 2024, on World Bank data. Farm output per worker was US$2,159.15 in constant 2015 dollars in 2025. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG))

Undernourishment affected 9.8% of the population in 2024, on World Bank and FAO figures. Extreme poverty was 2.6% of the population below US$2.15 a day, and 16.1% below US$3.65 a day, both for 2023. The Gini index stood at 23 in 2023, on the World Bank's scale where 0 is equal. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.LMIC))

The hunger index and the dispute over it

The Global Hunger Index 2025 placed India 102nd of 123 with a score of 25.8, in the report's 'serious' band, up three places from 105th of 127 (27.3) in 2024. It records child wasting at 18.7%, among the highest in the report, stunting at 32.9% and undernourishment at 12.0%. The Indian government has formally contested the methodology. The World Bank's own stunting series, on 2020 data, puts the figure at 35.5% of under-fives — a different year and a different instrument, which is part of why the two are not directly comparable. ([Global Hunger Index](https://www.globalhungerindex.org/india.html))

Land and water

Water stress stood at 66.5% of available freshwater withdrawn on FAO data for 2022, and forest cover was 24.4% of land area in 2024. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWST.ZS))

What would have to change

Yields, water stress and undernourishment move on irrigation coverage, extension services, storage and procurement — all of which sit with the Union government, which designs the scheme and sets procurement, and with the states, which deliver it. On the hunger index specifically, part of the required change is methodological: the government's objection is that the index's components and weights do not reflect its own survey data. Both things can be reported at once. The ranking moved up three places; the child-wasting figure inside it remains among the report's highest; and the publishers and the ministry remain in dispute over what the number measures.

Young innovators demonstrated projects at the 'Robotics for Good Youth Challenge India 2026', held during India Mobile Congress 2026 by the Department of Telecommunications and the International Telecommunication Union, the Press Information Bureau said. ([PIB](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2321923))

Where India sits on artificial intelligence

The Global AI Index 2025 — the sixth edition, published on 4 December 2025 by The Observer — ranked India 17th of 93 with a score of 21, where the top-scoring country is set at 100. That is down seven places on 2024. Twelve countries were added and indicators were new and reweighted between editions. The same table shows the European Union at a score of 49 without a rank; the EU is not counted among the 93. ([The Observer](https://observer.co.uk/data/global-ai))

The Government AI Readiness Index 2025 from Oxford Insights ranked India 27th of 195 with a score of 66.55, up 19 places on 2024, on a new six-pillar framework. That movement needs a caveat: the first release in December 2025 printed India 21st with incorrect data, and corrected scores and rankings were issued in January 2026 and re-issued in May 2026 with identical rankings. ([Oxford Insights](https://oxfordinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/LATEST-GAIRI-Report-2025.pdf))

The rails the robots run on

Mobile subscriptions stood at 79.4 per 100 people in 2024, and 70% of the population used the internet in 2025, on ITU figures via the World Bank. Fixed broadband reached 3.2 subscriptions per 100 people in 2024. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS))

On price, the 2023 Cable.co.uk survey ranked India 7th of 237 for mobile data affordability at US$0.16 per gigabyte — collected in mid-2023 and published that September. On speed, Ookla's rolling June–August 2026 value ranked India 32nd of 102 at 128.2 Mbps, down seven places on the same period a year earlier. ([Ookla](https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/india))

India ranked first of 51 markets for real-time payments in ACI Worldwide's 2024 report, with 129 billion transactions in the data year 2023; ACI attributes 49% of global real-time transactions to India. The Network Readiness Index 2025 placed India 45th of 127 with a score of 54.43, up four. On the Global Cybersecurity Index 2024, the ITU publishes no ranks; India is in Tier 1, 'role-modelling', one of 46 countries in that tier among 194 assessed, with a score of 98.49 out of 100. ([World Bank / ITU](https://data360api.worldbank.org/data360/data?DATABASE_ID=ITU_GCI&INDICATOR=ITU_GCI_GCI_OVRL_SCRE&REF_AREA=IND))

What the inputs look like

Research and development spending was 0.6% of GDP in 2020, with 259.3 researchers per million people, both on World Bank and UNESCO data. Patent applications by residents numbered 63,217 in 2024, and 2,28,174 scientific articles a year were published in 2023. India ranked 38th of 139 on WIPO's Global Innovation Index 2025, up one place. If the AI ranking is to be held, the levers are research budgets — set by the Union government — and the universities and state administrations that spend them.

The Union health minister, J. P. Nadda, will lay the foundation stone on 12 October for the Indian Council of Medical Research's Centre for High Altitude Medicine and Public Health Research, at a high-altitude site named in the release, the Press Information Bureau said. ([PIB](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2321966))

The system behind the announcement

India had 0.7 doctors per 1,000 people in 2020 and 1.6 hospital beds per 1,000 in 2021, on World Bank and WHO data — both the most recent values in this set. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS))

Out-of-pocket payments accounted for 43.9% of total health spending in 2023, the share households pay directly rather than through insurance or the state. The universal health coverage index was 69 out of 100 in 2023, on WHO data published through Our World in Data. ([Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index))

Life expectancy at birth was 72.2 years in 2024. Childhood immunisation reached 94% of children aged 12–23 months in 2024. Maternal mortality was 80 per 100,000 live births in 2023, and tuberculosis incidence 187 per 100,000 people in 2024. The suicide rate was 12.6 per 100,000 in 2021. On the World Bank's human capital index, India scored 0.49 out of 1 in 2020. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN))

Why altitude is a public-health question

Under-five mortality was 3.6% of children dying before age five, on UN IGME data published through Our World in Data for 2019. The household conditions that shape respiratory and child health: 81% of the population had access to clean cooking fuel in 2024, 76.4% to safely managed drinking water, and 62.8% to safely managed sanitation. Electricity access was 99.9% in 2024. ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.H2O.SMDW.ZS))

What would have to change

Out-of-pocket spending at 43.9% is the number that decides whether an illness pushes a household down the income scale; 16.1% of the population already lives below US$3.65 a day. Reducing it requires public provision and insurance coverage to expand faster than private costs — a budget decision for the Union health ministry and state health departments, and a revenue decision for the finance ministries that fund them. The doctors and beds ratios are the supply side of the same problem, and they move only with medical education and capital spending, both of which take years to register in the data.

The climate ranking fell sharply

The Climate Change Performance Index 2026, published by Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute and Climate Action Network International, ranked India 23rd of 67 with a score of 61.31 — down 13 places on 2025. Ranks 1 to 3 are left empty by design in that index. India dropped from the index's 'high' to its 'medium' performer band. ([CCPI](https://ccpi.org/country/ind/))

Air quality improved marginally

IQAir's eighth World Air Quality Report, covering 2025, ranked India 6th of 143 countries by population-weighted PM2.5 concentration at 48.9 micrograms per cubic metre — close to ten times the WHO guideline of 5, and an improvement on 2024, when India was 5th at 50.6. Delhi remained the world's most polluted capital at 82.2, itself a three-year low on that measure. ([IQAir](https://www.iqair.com/world-air-quality-report))

Second from last, and disputed

Yale's Environmental Performance Index for 2026 ranked India 176th of 177 with a score of 22.46, ahead only of Laos. The figure is contested. Yale cites air quality, coal dependence and weak biodiversity protection. India's ten-year change in score is positive at 7.47, while the rank has moved from 141st in 2016 to 176th now — measured over different spans, a falling rank and a rising score can sit alongside each other. The Environment Ministry rejected the 2022 edition outright as methodologically unsound. ([EPI](https://epi.yale.edu/))

Energy and emissions

Renewables supplied 24.1% of electricity generation in 2025, on Ember and Energy Institute data via Our World in Data, with solar generation at 196 terawatt-hours. Electricity use was 1,423 kilowatt-hours per person per year. ([Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewables))

Carbon dioxide emissions were 2.17 tonnes per person and 3,153.83 million tonnes in total in 2024, on World Bank data. Forest cover was 24.4% of land area, with tree cover loss running at 1,25,678 hectares a year. On the ND-GAIN index of vulnerability and readiness to adapt, India ranked 112th of 190 with a score of 44.4, up two places on 2023. ([ND-GAIN](https://gain-new.crc.nd.edu/country/india))

What would have to change

Yale attributes the low score to air quality, coal dependence and weak biodiversity protection; the CCPI's fall runs through the same set of issues. The levers — generation mix, industrial fuel use, enforcement of air-quality limits, protected-area management — sit with the Union power and environment ministries and with state governments, which approve capacity and enforce local law. Emissions per person and in total will move on the same decisions.