Economic success is about relative strengths: Here’s a four-point plan to make India’s economy competitive
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories."Our first kartavya (duty) is to accelerate and sustain economic growth by enhancing productivity and competitiveness.” This statement by India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in this year’s budget speech set a clear imperative: that productivity and competitiveness are not incidental to India’s growth story, but necessary conditions for its long-term economic development. Its significance has grown clearer since.
The Iran-US war has had cascading effects across the globe, again underscoring that in a world of geopolitical disruption, competitiveness is not a policy aspiration but a structural necessity. Against this backdrop, two questions are central.
What is the current state of India’s competitiveness? And what does it reveal about the country’s capacity to absorb external shocks and sustain growth in a world of flux?Competitiveness, as a concept, is best understood through the lens of productivity. The foundations of a country’s competitiveness lie in the set of policies, institutions and factors that shape how efficiently an economy extracts value from its factors of production such as labour, capital and natural resources.
It is this efficiency, sustained over time, that determines whether growth translates into enduring prosperity.To examine this question rigorously, the Institute for Competitiveness is publishing the State of India’s Competitiveness Report. It offers a systematic diagnosis of how efficiently India develops and deploys its productive factors.
As highlighted in the report, India’s productive landscape has seen significant improvements in recent years. Output per worker grew by nearly 3.8% annually during 2010-24, higher than in advanced economies such as
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