At today's pace, when does India reach the top 3?
Read this first: these are sums, not forecasts
Every year on this page assumes India keeps exactly the pace of its last ten years, every single year, with no speeding up, no slowing down, no shocks and no limits. No country moves like that.
Use this page to see which gaps are closing fast and which are not closing at all. Do not quote a year from it as a prediction.
The measures, sorted into four groups
Each measure sits in one group. The year beside it is when India reaches the level that today's third-best country has now, if India's pace does not change. Tap a measure to see its chart.
Point at a group, or tap it, to read what it means.
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The warning that this is arithmetic and not a forecast is printed on the picture.
All the sums
Two answers are given for each measure. The first holds the target still at today's third-best level. The second lets every country keep moving at its own pace, which is the stricter test.
How the sums are done, and where they mislead
- "About now". Where the sum says India reached the level in a year that has already passed, the page says "about now". The latest published figure is a year or more old, so the next figure may or may not show it.
- The target. "Top 3" means India's figure is at least as good as that of the third-best of the 12 countries. The first answer uses that country's figure as it stands today.
- The pace. India's change between its latest figure and its figure about ten years earlier, spread evenly over those years. Where there is no figure ten years back, five years is used. Where there is neither, no sum is done.
- Two kinds of pace. For money, for counts per person and for rates such as deaths per 1,000, the pace is a percentage change a year, which is how growth is normally quoted. For shares such as "% of people with electricity" and for years of life, it is points a year.
- If the others keep moving too. Every country is moved forward at its own pace, year by year to 2100, and the answer is the first year India is in the top 3. Shares are not allowed to pass 100 or fall below 0.
- Pace needed for 2047. The steady yearly change that would take India from its latest figure to today's third-best level by 2047, and how many times faster that is than the pace of the last ten years.
- Where this misleads. Change is not steady. Gains get harder as a country nears the top. A fast decade may have been a catch-up that cannot repeat, and a slow one may hide a recent turn. Other countries will not hold their pace either.
- Money figures. The two income measures are in current prices, so their pace includes price rises as well as real growth. That flatters the answer.
- Left out. Measures with no better or worse direction are not projected.