2026 is a year of milestones. Do big numbers mean better lives for the average Indian?

Dear reader, as 2025, a year of global tumult and volatility, rolls by, Mint's reporters and columnists look around the corner on what is coming in 2026—to help you know what to expect and prepare for it. Tell us what you think at [email protected].As the year 2025 drew to a close, thousands of spectators braved Delhi’s foul air, made stagnant by the unyielding winter winds, to catch a glimpse of Lionel Messi. Not long back, it would have been a regular meet-and-greet for a legendary footballer.

But this one was different. Fans booed the city-state’s chief minister for the poor air, a grievance likely unheard of in Messi’s home nation of Argentina, a fellow emerging economy.Cut to 2026, three months in. India is expected to expand to $4 trillion in GDP, just $150 billion shy of beating Japan to become number four in the global pecking order.

That will be a momentous milestone: the pandemic had dashed India’s national dream of reaching $5 trillion by 2025, and a success marker was long due. India will soon cross that goal too.Yet, as the confetti of success stories—and there are quite a few of them—settles, a more complex reality becomes evident, one that is represented more by the scenes at the Delhi stadium than by the accolades for milestones that are inevitable for our size. A nation of 1.45 billion is increasingly hungry for better lives.That’s why many were not impressed when a top Niti Aayog official prematurely declared in May that India had already gone past Japan.

Social media was flooded with comparisons between the quality of life in the two countries. Of course, India's structural problems and deep challenges cannot be addressed in a year or two. But each year can lead to incremental progress, as 2025