India's 2047 ambitions need large foreign capital inflows, deep reforms

The political discourse in India is unified around the aspiration of becoming a developed nation, or Viksit Bharat, by 2047. We must examine the arithmetic of this ambition.
The World Bank defines a high-income country as one with a per capita gross national income of around $14,000. India currently stands at about $2,700. A mechanical calculation shows that reaching a per capita of $14,000 from $2,700 over 20 years would require an annual compound growth rate of 8.5 per cent.
Concurrently, the Indian population expands by roughly 1 per cent a year. When we adjust for this moving target and population expansion, the required growth rate in aggregate output is roughly 9 per cent a year. Sustaining a 9 per cent compound growth rate over two decades is a formidable task.