Per Capita GDP as a better Indicator of Development

 A better indicator of development is per capita GDP and not the cumulative GDP because that tells us more about the status of the common people. This is what is taken in the estimation of the Human Development Index. Of course this still does not reflect the level of inequality which is very high in this country. Unfortunately, India has consistently been at the bottom of global rankings in this indicator and it has slipped below its South Asian neighbours with a per capita GDP of nominal US$ 2848 at current prices and a ranking of 143 out of 195 countries.

This, as I have repeatedly argued, is due to the neglect of government investment in education, health, ecosystem restoration, sustainable agriculture and distributed renewable energy generation right from the time of independence and especially since the late 1960s when the economy was in a shambles. Especially so from the mid 1970s when it became clear that the outgo on account of crude oil imports was a big drag on the economy. Even now when energy transition and carbon capture, utilisation and storage have become so crucial there is little urgency to jack up investments in renewable energy generation, ecosystem restoration and sustainable agriculture.
As the graph below shows the compound annual growth rate in per capita GDP has been abysmally low in the decades of 1961-1970 and 1971-80 and 1981-90 at around 3%. What is interesting is that it dropped to a low of 1.8% in the decade of 1991-2000 because the CAGR for population spiked to 4.2% in that decade. The decade of 2001-2010 saw the CAGR for per capita GDP going up impressively by 7.5% because of a decline in both population growth and retail inflation. However, it again drops to 4.3% in the period from 2011-2019 just before the Covid crisis because both population growth and retail inflation plateau out instead of declining. Things have not improved much since the Covid crisis either as we are still at the bottom of global rankings in human development.
Given this long term macro economic bungling by the Government through its consistently anti-people development policies, I find it laughable when I read about NGOs, philanthropies and corporations claiming that they are making an impact through their marginal work in the development sector.