Growing like Vande Bharat.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (yesterday) said that India is being watched with great hope by the world today and that the country has made remarkable progress in strengthening the economy, battling poverty and combating the Covid-19 pandemic." TOI. "The Prime Minister said, India is unstoppable now and said that it is advancing and will continue to advance at a speed parallel to that of Vande Bharat." Vande Bharat are express trains designed for day trips between major cities in India. wikipedia. Unfortunately, "India's fastest train 'Vande Bharat Express' has been running at an average speed of around 83 kmph over the last two years despite being capable of hitting a maximum of 180 kmph owing to poor track conditions, a reply to an RTI query has revealed. The RTI, filed by Madhya Pradesh-based Chandra Shekhar Gaur, said the average speed of the semi high-speed train was 84.48 kmph in 2021-22, while the same was 81.38 kmph in 2022-23." Is India's economy running at less than half the speed necessary, like the Vande Bharat? "India's gross domestic product growth could be above 7% for 2022-23, the Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said." ET. "China's economy grew at 9.26% in 1991 and continued to run at an average of around 10% for two decades till 2011 when it grew at 9.55%. The highest rate was 14.23% in 2007 and the lowest was 7.66% in 1999. macrotrends. China's nominal GDP was $17.734 trillion in 2021. World Bank. And yet, it is considered a middle-income country. "China's push to revive its economy in 2023 has a central theme of circumventing the middle-income trap, which the world's second-largest economy now faces." The Print. "India  is currently a lower-middle income country with a GNI (Gross National Income) per capita of $2,170." Mint. While, "an income greater than $13,205 is currently categorized as high-income." To grow income the economy has to create jobs. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha compared India's economy with 6 other Asian nations when their populations had a median age of 28, like we have now. The biggest difference is that, "India's labor force participation rate is much lower than what others reported at that time, and this gap ranges from 15 to 32 percentage points. Much of this wide gap is explained by very low levels of female participation in the labor force." To increase employment we need to educate our youth. Young people are spending large sums of money to get degrees, "Yet half of all graduates in India are unemployable in the future due to problems in the education system, according to a study by talent assessment firm Wheebox." BS. Enrollment in primary schools is 100% but, "83% of girls and 81% of boys clear secondary school, while 67.7% of girls and 61.6% of boys clear higher secondary; this translates to a whopping 39% dropout rate for boys," wrote Shailja Vaidya Gupta. As for the GDP, "India's national accountants use outdated data, heroic assumptions and rough proxies to fill these gaps in the national accounting database," wrote Pramit Bhattacharya. When GDP is not known we can grow at any speed. Like Vande Bharat Express.