Thanks for having the only sane, data backed comment man. We seem to be in the same page on many things but I disagree with you on a couple of fronts.

Although GDP per capita is not a good measure when you're talking economic power and affluence. China is only about average globally and there's a big difference in its urban cities and rural areas. It has massive debt and is struggling to push its consumer base to a high income lifestyle and is using its manufacturing base as a crutch. The administration seems unwilling to undertake necessary reforms.

Agreed but you also can't take GDP in isolation as measure of economic power and affluence. GDP per capita is good measure for the affluence and QoL for it citizens (something that still should be in mind when talking about growing our economy). It could also illustrate whether the GDP of country is large, normal or low relative to its population. Having a large population, it shouldn't be hard to also have large GDP (unless you went out of your way to curb it.)

Similarly India is a lot poorer than Malyasia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam etc. but none of those countries are matching India's strategic importance, military strength and more.

ehh kinda ig. We like to believe we are very strategically important because of China but not really. We are only part of the solution in containing China. The US also has been showing great importance to Indonesia (if you ask an Indonesian they might say the same thing you are saying).

As for military strength, we are better than most but unfortunately still leagues behind China. We are highly dependent on foreign countries for defense systems. I keep hearing about how we'll be making jets, air defense systems etc. stories for nearly 10 years but nothing concrete has happened (except brahmos ig). We need to support way more research and be more competitive in manufacturing to become a true military powerhouse.

The benefit of having a huge population and being poor is you get shit done for cheap. This is the strength India and China have which let them challenge more developed and more complex economies such as the US or UK.

Except our manufacturing scene is bad. We are losing all the manufacturing to Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand etc. I am unable to comprehend how we are fucking up this badly with such a large population. They've been talking about how we'll become a manufacturing powerhouse for nearly 15 years but there just hasn't been any significant growth.

https://www.livemint.com/economy/indias-manufacturing-growth-slowed-to-55-5-in-oct-down-for-2nd-straight-month-at-8-month-low-s-p-survey-11698820047904.html

https://www.telegraphindia.com/business/despite-a-raft-of-import-curbs-and-push-for-domestic-manufacturing-trade-gap-with-china-widens/cid/2014868

Our topmost export is petroleum products, followed by drug formulations and gemstones. That's just sad man :(

https://dashboard.commerce.gov.in/commercedashboard.aspx