Controversial: India will never overtake China or US

..unless either of the two mess up insanely bad

We'll probably get to the #3 spot if things go well. But it seems impossible that we'll ever go beyond that.

Internal reasons that are very hard to fix:-

(1) Our population TFR fell below standard replacement rate in 2023. This means we will not be able to follow the same economic growth trajectory required to reach developed status before population stagnation or declination. This is not a death knell but definitely very VERY bad news.

(2) Our blue-collar workforce skill levels are not only subpar but are slowly falling behind the world standards every year. Much of our youth aim to join government orgs like the Army or the Railways which train for the job later, not before. Despite a national shortage of skilled plumbers, electricians etc, our vocational training orgs have been unsuccessful in attracting people towards these careers as well as churning out skilled workers.

(3) Our bureaucratic environment is extremely slow with pathetic turnaround times on initiatives. This is not government specific and has always been the case so it seems like this will always be. This is not even a problem unique to India as many other countries have been facing this too but it is still a factor that negatively impacts our growth massively.

I wish it was just internal reasons but a large part of it also comes down to both China and US being aggressively great at ensuring their successes:-

(1) Chinese manufacturing seems nearly impossible to overcome - not just for India but also for the US. Yes, we might win over some industries and companies like the US, Vietnam, Thailand etc. have been doing but the amount of autocratic control in China allows them to crush competition easily. Case in point - the recent tussle between India and China on solar manufacturing which China won by autocratically lowering their prices.

(2) If de-dollarisation succeeds, it will benefit China the most because (contd. in comments)