A small percent is still large.

In January 2023, "Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said...that the Indian economy will be USD 3 trillion by the end of 2022-23 fiscal and is expected to be USD 7 trillion in the next seven years." ET. Now the Deutsche Bank has echoed this optimism. "India is on track to becoming a $7 trillion economy by 2030 powered by the triple engines of rapid financialisation, clean energy transition and digital revolution, according to a report by Deutsche Bank." BI. In addition there is the loan scheme for starting a business, PMMY. "As India's Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) completed eight years on 8 April," "Data as on 24 March 2023 puts the scheme's cumulative disburse amount at Rs 22.65 trillion," wrote Soumya Kanti Ghosh. The loans are labeled as: "Shishu (for loans up to Rs 50,000), Kishore (Rs 50,001- Rs 500,000) and Tarun (Rs 500,001 - Rs 1 million)." The share of Shishu loans is the highest." "Overall, the PMMY has achieved its objectives of equitable and fair distribution of benefits during its ninth year of operation by fostering self employment across social groups." At today's prices Rs 50,000 can only start a business frying pakoras as the Prime Minister advised in 2018. Ghosh praises the scheme for the near Rs 23 trillion distributed to various disadvantaged groups, but is curiously silent on how many such businesses are still operating, how much they are earning and what amount of loans have been repaid. "In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper recently, the chief executive of Japan's Daikin, the world's largest maker of air conditioners, Masanori Togawa, said that India 'would turn into a market as giant as China in the future, as the middle-class and wealthy are growing exponentially'." Mint. In 2015, taking the US as a benchmark, $13,700 was taken as a cutoff defining the middle-class, which converted to Rs 900,000 or slightly less than a salary of Rs 40,000 for two years. "On this criteria, the number of middle-class adults in India was estimated at 24 million - just around 3% of the population." The median wealth, the mid-point of the poorest to the richest, was $3,457 in 2021, but the average wealth per adult was $14,804. "Thus a 'middle class' person in India is not really middle class in that sense - they are pretty much in the top 10%, if not 5% of the Indian wealth distribution." The Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) 2019-20 showed that people earning Rs 25,000 per month are in the top 10% of the population. TOI. However, the current population of India is in excess of 1400 million, worldometer, and 5% of that would be 70 million, which is higher than the entire population of the UK, at around 69 million, worldometer. And, not everyone is rich or middle-class in the UK. So, even though 95% of Indians are poor in wealth, Mr Togawa can still sell his air conditioners to around 70 million Indians. Not bad, is it?