India has not slipped to 164th place in the list of fastest growing nations among 193 countries…

A poster is doing rounds on Twitter claiming that India has slipped to 164^th place among 193 countries in the list of fastest growing economies. It also claims that India is now 164^th economy from being third largest economy in 2011.

However, we found these claims to be untrue. India is the fastest growing economy in the world as per United Nations (UN) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). In addition, in terms of Purchase Power Parity (PPP), India is the third largest economy in the world and fifth largest in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Let’s check the details of the fake narrative and understand what the truth is.

Fake Narrative on Social Media

PM Modi will visit Chennai on 28 and 29 July, where he will inaugurate the Chess Olympiad and attend the 42^nd convocation of Anna university. On this backdrop, some Twitter users started trending #GoBackModi on Twitter to protest PM Modi’s visit to Chennai. One of the users, who tweeted using this hashtag, shared the poster, which went viral. The viral tweet can be seen below.

Archived Link

The poster claims, “India is now the 164^th fastest growing nation in the world, among 193 countries. From 3^rd largest economy in 2011 to 164^th in 2021.” Let’s find out how true these claims are. 

Fact Check

Before verifying the claims made in the viral poster, let’s first brush up our knowledge on some of the economy related terms we will encounter ahead. 

1. Gross Domestic Product (GDP): The Britannica Encyclopedia defines GDP as, ‘total market value of the goods and services produced by a country’s economy during a specified period of time.’ A country’s GDP is usually measured for a year.
2. GDP Growth Rate: The WHO defined Annual GDP growth rate as follows – The annual average rate of change of the gross domestic product (GDP) at market prices based on constant local currency, for a given national economy, during a specified period of time. It expresses the difference between GDP values from one period to the next as a proportion of the GDP from the earlier period, usually multiplied by 100. It is expressed in terms of percentage. The GDP growth rate is a very important indicator tells us how much the country’s GDP has grown over the specified period.
3. Purchase Power Parity (PPP): As per UNESCO PPP is defined as follows – Currency exchange rate that equalize the purchasing power of different currencies. This means that a given sum of money, when converted into US dollars at the PPP exchange rate (PPP dollars), will buy the same basket of goods and services in all countries. In other words, PPP is the rate of currency conversion, which eliminate the differences in price levels among countries. To understand this, we can consider the example of a good that is sold at 500 Rs. in India and USD 5 in the US. Thus, 1 Dollar is equivalent to 100 Rs.
4. Nominal GDP: Nominal gross domestic product is gross domestic product (GDP) evaluated at current market prices. GDP is the monetary value of all the goods and services produced in a country.
5. Real GDP: Real GDP is Nominal GDP adjusted for inflation.

The economy of a country is measured in terms of either GDP Nominal or GDP PPP. These two indicators tell us how well a country’s economy is performing and vice versa.  In terms of GDP, India is the fifth largest economy in the world. As per a Business Today report, India’s nominal GDP of 2.94 trillion USD has overtaken UK (2.83 trillion USD) and France (2.73 trillion USD) to become the fifth largest economy in the world in terms of Nominal GDP.

In terms of Purchase Power Parity, Indian economy ranks 3^rd in the world. As per a government press release in 2020, in 2017, India retained and consolidated, its global position, as the third largest economy, accounted for 6.7 percent ($8,051 billion out of World total of $119,547 billion) of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in terms of PPPs as against China (16.4%) and United States (16.3%), respectively.

This was based on International Comparison Program (ICP) report, which was last released by World Bank in October 2020.

Despite IMF slashing India’s growth rate projection, Indian economy is still expected to grow at a rate of 7.4% second only to Saudi Arabia (7.6%).

Conclusion

The claim that India is now 164^th in the list of fastest growing economies among 193 countries. India is the second fastest growing economy as per IMF’s projection. India is third largest economy in the world in terms of PPP and fifth largest in the world in terms of Nominal GDP.