Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar lavished praise on the Narendra Modi government, asserting that the country has witnessed "unparalleled" growth in the last decade, on Friday – even as India’s private sector output fell to a 14-month low.

"The growth witnessed by the country in the last 10 years is unparalleled. We are already the fifth largest economy and in five years from now, we will occupy the third spot... Viksit [developed] Bharat is not a pipedream. It will be realised by 2047, when we celebrate the centenary of Independence. Bharat shall become the vishwa guru," Dhankhar said at an event in Samastipur, Bihar.

The same day, HSBC data compiled by S&P Global and published by Reuters showed that because of weaker services demand, India’s business activity has receded in January 2025. The Purchasing Managers’ Index, which indicates the country’s economic health, fell to 57.9 per cent in January, the lowest reading since November 2023.

Dhankar, meanwhile, lauded Modi for bringing in schemes that improved the quality of life of the common people by providing them with gas connections, electricity and toilets “zealously (junoon ke saath)" .

With the timeline set for India becoming vishwa guru, here’s a look at other targets that this government has set.

Make in India

Under this much touted project, the government pledged to raise the share of manufacturing to 25 per cent of GDP – the overall measure of goods and services – by 2025.

On September 25 last year, the 10th anniversary of the project, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on his blog: “Each of you is a pioneer, visionary and innovator, whose tireless efforts have fuelled the success of ‘Make in India’ and thereby made our nation the focus of global attention as well as curiosity. The impact of ‘Make in India’ shows that Bharat is unstoppable.”

According to various reports, the share of value addition by manufacturing sector was about 16 per cent in 2023-24.

2 crore jobs

During his campaign for 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Modi promised two crore jobs every year. In July 2024, he said his government had created eight crore new jobs in the last three to four years.

“Less than half of the 950 million working-age population is actually employed, compared to 70% in other emerging markets,” an analysis in the Harvard Business Review, published the same month as Modi’s claim of eight crore new jobs, said.

“Bleak as this statistic is, the reality is worse. According to the Periodic Labor Force Survey, some half of all those workers are self-employed, a category that includes ‘unpaid helpers in family enterprises,’ which could cover family and friends who help out for no compensation,” the analysis added.

Even if we take Modi’s claim of creating eight crore jobs to be true, it falls short.

An analysis by Mckinsey says that “over the decade to 2030, India needs to create at least 90 million [nine crore] new nonfarm jobs to absorb the 60 million [six crore] new workers who will enter the workforce based on current demographics, and an additional 30 million [three crore] workers who could move from farm work to more productive nonfarm sectors.”

Debate about how the government counts employment has also been raging. Union labour minister Mansukh Mandaviya a week ago suggested redefining the concept of “employment” to include in India’s growing self-employed workforce women working within households and self-employed individuals and those caring for cattle or working on farms.

After Mandaviya’s suggestions, Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that Haryana’s Sirsa, 5,700 young men applied for 13 posts of peon and chowkidar in a court.

“It’s surprising that for this recruitment which requires Class VIII pass, applicants with degrees of BA, B. Tech, B. Com, B. Pharmacy, BCA, MA, MBA, MSc, MCom, MCA, and MPhil have applied,” Hooda said.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge also lambasted the government’s claims: “82 per cent youth are looking for a job this year, 55 per cent said it became difficult to find a job last year, and 37 per cent say they have given up hope of finding a new job in 2025.”

“The Modi government has duped the youth with lies like paper leaks by the Mafia Raj, stampede for a few jobs, snatching jobs by shutting down MSME through bad policies like demonetisation and wrong GST, usurping the right to reservation, keeping government job posts vacant for years and promising two crore jobs annually. By converting unpaid labour into jobs and counting even one-hour work per week as jobs, it is deceiving the country," the Congress president said.

The Telegraph Online reported Thursday how hundreds of railways job aspirants took to social media to call out the government’s employment objectives.

$10 trillion, $15 trillion, $20 trillion economy

So, what is Vikshit Bharat, which Dhankhar spoke about Friday? According to published reports quoting various Modi government ministers and functionaries, the aim is to turn India to a $30-trillion developed economy in about two decades for a projected 1.65 billion population.

In 2019, Modi had claimed India will have a “$5 trillion economy by 2024-2025.”

In June, 2023, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s office tweeted that India’s GDP had touched the $3.75 trillion mark in 2023.

That same year, India’s chief economic advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran said that India’s economy will touch the $7-trillion mark “in the next seven years.”

According to a January 9 report in The Indian Express, “At the current exchange rate of 85 rupees to a dollar, India’s GDP in FY25 will be $3.8 trillion.”