Short of $17.8 trillion, will India overtake China to become world's economic heavy weight by 2028?

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Bloomberg report, the Indian stock market is blooming thanks to the foreign funding and Centre's new trade deals. The youthful market of 143 crore Indians is attracting international manufacturing bigwigs, who once clustered around southern China. Aircraft makers such as the Boeing Inc are taking record orders from Indian arlines such as Air India and IndiGo, while the tech gaint Apple Inc is scaling up production of India-made iPhones.

Although the picture looks rosy, but India’s $3.5 trillion economy is still short $17.8 trillion from China's colossus economy. Economists are of the view that it would take a lifetime for India to catch up with its shoddy roads, patchy education, red tape and a lack of skilled workers. According to the Bloomberg report, there’s one important measure where India could overtake its northern neighbor far more quickly: As the engine of global economic growth.

Bullish investment banks, such as Barclays, believe that India can become the world’s largest contributor to growth within Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s next term. The Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections set to begin in weeks. The analysis by Bloomberg Economics is even more optimistic, finding that India can reach that milestone by 2028 on a purchasing power parity basis.

To get there, Modi government will need to hit ambitious goals in four crucial development areas — building better infrastructure, expanding the skills and participation of the workforce, building better cities to house all those workers, and luring more factories to provide them jobs. According to a Bloomberg Economics analysis, India could become the World's No 1 contributor to GDP growth as early as 2028. China's economic