Did Indian Economy Fall From 3rd Largest In 2011 To 164th In 2021? No, Viral Claim Is Misleading

An image stating that India has fallen from being the 3rd largest economy in 2011 to the 164th fastest-growing economy in 2021 has gone viral across social media. The image is being circulated as a criticism of the Modi government.

Former Cabinet Minister Subramanian Swamy tweeted the viral image.

Claim:

The viral image is a graphic containing an image of PM Narendra Modi. The text at the top of the image reads, "India is now 164th fastest growing nation in the world, among 193 countries." The text at the bottom reads, "From 3rd largest economy in 2011 to "164th" in 2021." The viral image was circulated by Subramanian Swamy in a tweet.

The viral posts claim that the state of the Indian economy has deteriorated, falling from the position of the 'third largest economy to the '164th fastest growing nation in the world'.

Other netizens circulated the claim widely. A Twitter user wrote, "From 3rd largest economy in 2011 to 164th in the world among 193 countries, how does BJP or its hypnotised brigade of blinded Bhakts defend this."

The post is viral across Facebook as well.

Fact Check:

The Logical Indian fact check team verified the viral claim and found it to be misleading.

First, we conducted a keyword search to understand how terms such as Gross Domestic Product and Purchase Power Parity are defined.

As per details on the website of the International Monetary Fund, an economy produces goods and services within its borders, and GDP is calculated in money terms in a given time period, usually within a year. GDP is the monetary value of final goods and services, those bought by the final user, produced in a country in a given period.

Purchase Power Parity, as noted by the IMF and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is the rate at which the currency of one country would be converted into that of another country to buy the same amount of goods and services in each country.

Then we conducted a keyword search with the terms, 'India ranked 3rd largest world economy 2011'. We came across this report from The Hindu published on May 23, 2016. The report stated that India emerged as the world's third-largest economy in 2011 from the status of the tenth largest in 2005. India had moved ahead of Japan, while the US remained the largest economy, followed by China, as per the Hindu report.

We also came across a report by The Ministry of External Affairs published on April 30, 2014. The report states that India emerged as the world's third-largest economy in 2011 in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). The MEA report noted the 2011 International Comparison Program (ICP), which ranked India before Japan and followed the US and China.

In the report, former General Secretary of Congress party Shakeel Ahmad is quoted as saying, "This is an answer to Modi and other leaders of opposition for their false accusations against us."

We took the cue from the 2011 International Comparison Program and conducted a keyword search. We came across the following statistics in a document by the World Bank. In the report, it is stated that the ranking of India rose from fifth in 2005 to third in 2011.

We also came across this report by the Press Information Bureau, which carried information regarding India retaining its global position in 2017 as the third largest economy in terms of PPPs.

The latest data on the World Bank's website also indicates that India remains the third largest economy in the world in terms of PPP.

We then conducted a keyword search for the relevant keywords, 'India 164th fastest growing economy'. This led us to this tweet by Kaushik Basu, the former Chief Economist of the World Bank. It was tweeted on 14 Feb, 2021.

The tweet led us to this report published in Statistics Times, which carried projections for the GDP growth in countries. The report titled 'List of Countries by Projected GDP Growth' is based on International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook.

As per the report, India is ranked at the 143rd position, as per data based on the October 2021 edition of the IMF's World Economic Outlook.

We searched for the archived version of the Projected GDP Growth for the October-2020 edition. The report noted that the ranking of India had fallen to 164th position in terms of projected growth in the GDP.

We conducted a keyword search for the IMF's World Economic Outlook data for October 2020. This database documented the percent change in India's GDP growth over the period from 2020 and 2021.

As per the latest estimates released by the IMF, the estimated growth in India is at 8.95% from April 2021 to March 2022. Meanwhile, India's real GDP is estimated to grow at 8.2% in 2022, while the projected percentage change in inflation is at 6.1, as per IMF data.

Conclusion:

In our Fact Check, we found that the viral image compares two different parameters for measuring the economies of a country. In terms of Purchase Power Parity, India emerged as the world's third-largest economy in 2011, as per the data on the 2011 International Comparison Program and the World Bank.

Meanwhile, in terms of per cent change in projected GDP growth of countries, India was ranked at the 164th position in the October 2020 edition of the Projected GDP Growth, based on IMF's World Economic Outlook. Both these metrics have been compared to present a misleadingly deteriorating state of the Indian economy.

If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.

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