Roadmap for 5 trillion dollar economy — We have already become the world's sixth largest economy and will soon be among the top five. We aspire to make India the third largest economy of the world by 2030. This implies that we commit to make India a US $ 5 trillion economy by 2025 and US $ 10 trillion economy by 2032.

This is one of the few manifesto promises that names a number and a year and cannot be argued about. "We commit to make India a US $ 5 trillion economy by 2025."

India's GDP at current prices, on the IMF's World Economic Outlook database, was $2.78 trillion in 2019 when the promise was made and $3.92 trillion in 2025. That is 78 per cent of the target, missed by roughly $1.08 trillion. The IMF's projections put India past $5 trillion in 2028.

The imported version of this claim dated the promise to 2024-25. It does not; the manifesto says 2025, and the miss is judged against that.

Why it was missed is not mysterious, and the honest reading is not that nothing happened. India's dollar GDP grew by about 41 per cent over six years. Two things worked against the target.

The first is the pandemic. Dollar GDP fell from $2.78 trillion in 2019 to $2.61 trillion in 2020 — a year lost, and then some. Recovery was fast: $3.08 trillion in 2021, $3.25 trillion in 2022, $3.50 trillion in 2023, $3.76 trillion in 2024. But the compounding needed to reach $5 trillion by 2025 required roughly 10 per cent annual dollar growth from a 2019 base, and a contraction year makes that arithmetic unrecoverable.

The second is the exchange rate. A dollar target is only partly a domestic achievement. Real growth in rupees has been strong through most of this period; the rupee has depreciated against the dollar over the same years, which subtracts from the dollar figure without subtracting from anything Indians produce. A government can influence the first and does not control the second. That is a fair point about the target, and it is a point about the target the manifesto chose.

The companion aspiration has fared better. "We aspire to make India the third largest economy of the world by 2030." On the same IMF projections India overtakes Japan in 2027 ($4.58 trillion against $4.56 trillion) and draws level with Germany in 2030 ($6.17 trillion against $6.18 trillion). Third place by 2030 is plausible and roughly on schedule — though the manifesto phrased that one as an aspiration and the $5 trillion figure as a commitment, and it is the commitment that was missed.

Recorded as not delivered against the date, and not supported as a claim: a promise to reach a figure by a year, where the year has passed and the figure was not reached.