Poonam Gupta: Prosperous states for a prosperous India
Speech by Dr Poonam Gupta, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, at the "Columbia Indian Economy Summit 2026", Raj Centre on Indian Economic Policy, Columbia University, New York City, 11 April 2026.
It is my pleasure to be here at the Columbia Indian Economy Summit, 2026. I would like to thank Prof. Arvind Panagariya for his kind invitation to me to speak on issues related to India's growth trajectory, both at the national and at the states' level.
My talk is in three parts. I will first present select salient features of the trajectory of economic growth of India over the past four decades, and what it bodes for the years to come. Then, I will present key characteristics of the states' respective growth trajectories. Finally, I will draw some inferences and implications from these observations for our quest to attain the status of a much more prosperous economy by 2047.
1. Salient features of the trajectory of economic growth of India over the past four decades
India's economic growth has consistently accelerated since the early 1980s. Average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth has increased from 5.7 per cent in the 1980s to 5.8 per cent in the 1990s, rising further to 6.3 per cent in the 2000s, to 6.6 per cent in the 2010s, and reaching 7.7 per cent in the most recent four-year period (Table 1).