Analyses › Growth
Growth
The 2020 GDP contraction was the steepest since independence
GDP shrank 5.8% in 2020-21 (April 2020 to March 2021, MoSPI's latest estimate on the 2011-12 base), the largest annual contraction since independence. The previous largest was 5.2% in 1979-80. Growth rebounded to 9.7% in 2021-22, and the share of formal jobs did not follow it. The ILO-IHD India Employment Report 2024 finds that nearly two thirds of the incremental employment after 2019 comprised self-employed workers, most of them unpaid family workers, who are mainly women. NITI Aayog puts the number of gig workers at 7.7 million in 2020-21.
What follows. The recovery added jobs, and most of them were self-employment and unpaid family work. The share of workers in formal jobs did not return to its 2017-18 level.
Real GDP growth
2004-2013 average 6.8%; 2014-2026 average 6.2%; latest 7.7% in 2025. Source, method and every year.
One of 37 readings of the dataset. Data vintage 2026-10-19. Cite as Raman, V.S., Some Perspective: India's Political Economy, 2004-2026, someperspective.info, CC BY 4.0.