Transcription
August 15th, 1947. It was the dead of night. Javahar Lal Neheru's voice echoed through the parliament. He declared India had kept its trrist with destiny.
"Long years ago, we made a trrist with destiny. And now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge."
What he failed to mention was this: The newly sovereign India was broke. The British left behind a bleeding country divided, looted and hollowed out. In the 1700s, India accounted for nearly 24% of global GDP. It was called the Golden Bird because of its immense wealth and prosperity. By the time the Union Jack came down, that had plunged to just under 4%. Famines hollowed out the country. Railways served only colonial extractions. The economy was stunted. Food shortages were common. Life expectancy stood at 32 years. The literacy rate was 12%. To build a future, India first had to survive its present. And yet from these ruins rose one of the world's most resilient economies. Today India is the fourth largest economy in the world. So how did we achieve this? Well, this is that story.
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Ask anyone who grew up in India in the 1950s or 60s and they will tell you one thing: Scarcity was the default setting. India's first prime minister was a man of science and idealism. Javahar Lal Nehu believed in state-led industrialization. Steel plants, dams and banks were built. Five-year plans were borrowed from the Soviet Union. It dictated what would be produced, in what quantity, and by whom. But along with it came the license raj. To make a pin you needed permission. To import a machine you needed approvals. To set up a factory you needed connections. A phone line could take seven years. A scooter had a waiting list of a decade. Foreign goods, forget about it. Between 1950 and 1980, India's GDP grew at 3.5% a year. Economists called it the Hindu rate of growth. At this pace, it would take India decades to double its economy.
But even this period was not without some winds. There was the green revolution of the 1960s. Looming famines turned into food security. India used to import wheat from the US, but by 1970 it was self-sufficient. So there were successes, and yet poverty was widespread. Foreign exchange reserves were dwindling. In 1980, India's per capita income was lower than Sudan's. It tells you how bad the situation was.
But then came whispers of reform. Rajiv Gandhi took office. He was young and tech-forward. He began tinkering with the system. Textiles were deregulated. Computers were introduced. Telecom was declared a priority. Growth rose to 5 to 6% and a flicker of urban prosperity appeared. Middle-class families bought their first Maruti Suzuki cars. Color television sets arrived. Live cricket on Doordarshan united the nation. India's economy was no longer crawling, but it was not exactly sprinting either. And beneath the surface, a crisis was brewing.
By 1991, things looked very bleak. India was heavily in debt. Inflation was high. Growth was low and investor confidence had collapsed. India's foreign exchange reserves hit rock bottom. We had enough to last only about 2 weeks. Only two weeks. It was barely enough to pay for essential imports. The government had to airlift its gold reserves to London. It was collateral for future loans. India also approached the International Monetary Fund, the IMF. They gave a $2.2 billion loan. In exchange, India had to agree to structural reforms. So the humiliation was complete. But as they say, necessity breeds reform.
Under Prime Minister Narim Rao and his finance minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, India did the unthinkable. "True to this heritage, we commit ourselves to providing a firm and purposeful sense of direction to the reform process so that this ancient land of India regains its glory and rightful place in the committee of nations." We finally dismantled the license raj. The rupee was devalued. Trade barriers were removed. Foreign companies were invited and restrictions on private enterprise were lifted. It was an economic revolution. And India's economy, finally unshackled, started to roar.
In the first year, GDP growth bounced to 5.5%. Exports surged and entrepreneurs found wings. By the early 2000s, India's new identity was clear. We were the world's IT powerhouse. Cities like Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad became global back offices for multinational giants. Call centers and software firms flourished. Infosys, TCS and Wipro became household names both in India and abroad. And the numbers spoke for themselves. Between 2003 and 2008, GDP growth averaged 8.8%. India was no longer just catching up. It was outpacing peers. Foreign direct investment flowed in. Aspiration soared. Middle-class families now shopped in malls. Indians flew abroad. They queued for their first iPhones.
And with this growth came resilience. In 2008, there was a global financial crisis. It shook economies from Wall Street to Shanghai. India wobbled but did not fall. By 2010, it was back to 9% growth, even overtaking China in some quarters. For the next half decade, the pace stayed heady. Growth stayed between 7 and 8%. And with Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking office, the economy remained the top priority. The next few years were marked by record growth. It was fueled by consumption, the abundance of cheap credit and a booming services sector. Smartphones flooded the market. Malls mushroomed. Air travel became a middle-class routine. India was no longer just developing. It was aspiring.
But the momentum would not last forever. By 2019, the engine began to sputter. And then came 2020. The Wuhan virus spread across the globe. India was not spared. The pandemic hit India like a freight train. Cities locked down. Demand dried up. The GDP contracted by a staggering 7.3%. It was India's worst economic performance in almost 40 years.
But as always, India rebounded fiercely. In 2021, it roared back with 9% growth. This was led by vaccination drives, record exports, and tech adoption at a scale never seen before. UPI transactions exploded, digital classrooms went mainstream, rural consumption picked up. From 2022 to 2023, that momentum held. In 2024, there was a slight wobble, but even then, the trajectory was unmistakably upward.
In 2025, India celebrated a statistical milestone, a $4 trillion economy. It became the fourth largest economy in the world, just ahead of Japan and a little shy of Germany. And we have numbers to prove this. Services now contribute to over 50% of the GDP. Manufacturing clocks in at 28%, agriculture is 13%. India's per capita income in 1947 was about 250 rupees a year. In 2025, it's nearly 2 lakh rupees. We were once a nation of shortages. Now India is a nation of surpluses.
Take electricity for example. We used to import it from Bhutan. But in 2017, India became a net exporter of electricity. It was for the first time ever. And since then there's been no looking back. We now export power to Nepal and Bangladesh.
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In the 1950s, we imported penicillin. Now, India is the pharmacy of the world. We produce 70% of the global vaccines. We export medicines to the world, and we saw it during the pandemic. India sent vaccines to 160 countries. India's pharma exports now stand at over $30 billion. And life expectancy, it was 32 years in 1947. Today, it's over 70.
Then there's food. When the British left, we were a land of famines. Food security was a huge problem. We depended on other countries for food aid. But today we have enough to feed ourselves and much of Asia. India is the world's largest rice exporter. It is the world's largest milk producer. We export wheat and pulses. Spices are a key export and so is sugar.
And here are some fun facts ahead of Independence Day. Fact number one, UPI processed 172 billion transactions in 2024. This is India's homegrown digital payment platform. And this was a record high, almost five times of Visa's global volume. Fact number two, in 1990, India had five cars for every 1,000 people. In 2025, that number is over 30. We are the third largest car market in the world. Fact number three, India got its first smartphone in 2004. Today, we are the second largest smartphone market in the world, just behind China. We are also the second biggest 4G market. Fact number four, only 14 million Indians had been on a flight by 2001. Today, we are the third largest aviation market. 174 million people took a flight in 2024. At this rate, we could outpace China by 2027. Fact number five, around 4.4 million Indians traveled internationally in 2000. In 2024, that number was at 30 million. Traveling to foreign countries is more and more popular. Something that was unthinkable in 1947.
Now I could go on and on, but you get the gist. India has come a long, long way since its independence. The path ahead is full of promises, but also with its own set of challenges. Inequality remains sharp. India's billionaires multiply, but rural distress still simmers. Unemployment is a silent crisis. Climate change threatens everything from crops to coastal cities. Yet India holds one ace, its youth. Nearly 50% of India's population is under 30. If we can educate, employ and empower our youth, we may write a second freedom story.
So this Independence Day, it's worth remembering this: India fought hard for its freedom and its prosperity. It fought even harder for it. From famine to forex power, from telegrams to terabytes, from bullet carts to bullet trains, from post-colonial poverty to post-pandemic promise. It's not just about what we won in 1947. It's about what we have built since then. And that journey is far from over. The golden bird is airborne again.
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