73 national indicators · 20 everyday measures · two trajectories
The India the headlines don’t fully explain
Since 2014, much international discussion of India has focused on politics, institutions and social conflict. This project looks at another question: what actually happened to India’s infrastructure, security, economy, digital systems and state capacity?
Across 73 indicators it compares the India that emerged under Narendra Modi with an estimated alternative — what if Rahul Gandhi had become Prime Minister in 2014 and the broad UPA-era trajectory had continued? The point is not to show that India improved. It is to ask whether India improved more than we should reasonably have expected without the post-2014 change.
- Plus 20 Everyday India measures
- 13Modi ahead4Rahul leads3comparable
- A second layer, counted separately. Basic lived-development outcomes scored on normalised rates of improvement rather than against a counterfactual — never added to the 73 above.
- National indicators
- 73
- With a counterfactual
- 20
- Significant at p ≤ 0.10
- 5
- Rahul is behind
- 69/73
- A separate count, and a weaker one. Most of these compare India to its own past rather than to an estimated alternative, and none is a significance test.
The comparison · 2014 – 2024
Rahul’s India would have been 13% poorer and 66% less secure
Two questions: richer, and safer? Both axes are the same single comparison read from one side. Modi’s India sits at the centre as the reference point, and Rahul’s India at its offset — up means richer, right means safer. Switching perspective in the header swaps which is which; the underlying numbers do not change.
Economy · Real GDP per capita, PPP
8,305vs9,416
Rahul vs Modi · pre-2014 fit 1.3% · 27 donors · rank 2/36 · p = 0.056
Security · All-theatre fatalities, annual average
2,020vs690
deaths per year · arithmetic on observed totals — no counterfactual, no placebo test
India is less safe and poorer
- Jammu & Kashmir712 → 257/yr-64%
- Naxal / LWE664 → 295/yr-56%
- Bomb blasts321 → 141/yr-56%
- Civilians killed408 → 123/yr-70%
- Forces killed289 → 109/yr-62%
Twenty years of India’s own direction · 33 indicators, 2004 = 100
- Economy & society
- 376
- +114 to 2013, then +163
- Health
- 159
- +32 to 2013, then +27
- Security
- 188
- +77 to 2013, then +11
- All 33
- 186
- Median across every domain, oriented so higher is better. Economy and society is the one domain gaining more after 2014 than before.
Indicator by indicator
All 73 indicators, grouped by what an estimated alternative can establish. Where the data cannot support one, the card says so rather than being left out.
Modi ahead on 69Rahul ahead on 3of which 5 reach statistical significance
1Measured
Pre-2014 fit under 15%. Counterfactual estimated and placebo-tested.
5 of 20 loaded
2Estimated, not interpretable
The method could not reproduce India's own pre-2014 path. The verdict is shown, but rests on a counterfactual that does not fit.
5 of 8 loaded
3No counterfactual possible
No comparable cross-country series exists. The verdict compares observed Indian figures from 2014 to the latest available year — a weaker basis than an estimated counterfactual.
5 of 34 loaded
4Internal security
Jammu & Kashmir, left-wing extremism and the Northeast, from Home Ministry reporting with annual fatality series from SATP. Every parameter improved. No comparator country publishes an equivalent series, so none of it can be tested against a counterfactual — and several of these declines were already under way before 2014.
5 of 11 loaded
Supplementary analysis
And underneath the national numbers: Everyday India
The measures rich countries stopped thinking about
20 additional measures of lived development — health coverage, maternal care, vaccination, nutrition and social outcomes that can affect millions of people but rarely dominate political debate in wealthy societies. Counted separately from the 73 national indicators, because the two answer different questions.
Explore Everyday India- 13
- Modi-era leads
- 4
- Earlier-era leads
- 3
- Broadly comparable
Why this project exists
The part of India’s story that often gets missed
Much international discussion of India since 2014 has concentrated on democracy, religious tensions, minority rights, press freedom, institutional independence and political polarization.
These are legitimate areas of scrutiny. They are not the entirety of a country’s performance. A government also shapes, directly or indirectly, the things below — and these dimensions often receive less attention in international political coverage of India.
- democracy
- religious tensions
- minority rights
- press freedom
- institutional independence
- nationalism
- political polarization
Frequently covered. Not measured here — and not dismissed.
- Infrastructure
- roads and highways · railways · airports · urban development · border infrastructure · logistics
- State capacity
- public-service delivery · welfare delivery · formalization of the economy · healthcare capacity
- Digital
- digital public infrastructure · digital payments · banking access · financial inclusion
- Security
- internal security · terrorism and major attacks · defence capability · defence exports
- Basic services
- electricity access · sanitation · drinking water · housing
- Economy
- manufacturing · economic scale · exports · investment
This project examines that measurable side of India’s post-2014 change across 73 indicators. The objective is not to argue that political or institutional concerns should be ignored. It is to ask whether focusing predominantly on those concerns produces an incomplete picture of how India changed after 2014.
How the comparison is built
Is the usual story about India complete?
Countries are multidimensional. Asking what happened to infrastructure, security, the economy and state capacity is a different question from asking about institutions — and it needs a benchmark, or every improvement looks like an achievement. The site works through three stages.
Stage 1
India changed
What happened?
Measure the actual post-2014 record — infrastructure built, digital systems scaled, security incidents counted, services delivered. Description before interpretation.
Stage 2
The obvious objection
Would it have happened anyway?
India was already developing before 2014. Set the post-2014 record against the earlier trajectory, and against countries that shared that trajectory. This is where most claims on both sides fall down.
Stage 3
Rahul's India
How much was a genuine break?
Estimate the alternative: Rahul Gandhi becomes Prime Minister in 2014 and the broad UPA-era trajectory continues. Compare the India we got against that benchmark.
How the estimate is built →
A thesis — but not a predetermined result
The same rules apply whether a result helps or hurts
This project began from the observation that important parts of India’s post-2014 development receive relatively little attention in many international political narratives. That is the motivation for the analysis. It is not a licence to manipulate the answer.
Indicators stay on the site when the result is inconvenient. As it stands:
- 3
- indicators where Rahul's India performs better
- kept, not dropped
- 15
- of 20 measured results are not statistically significant
- shown with their p-values
- 45
- indicators have no counterfactual at all
- no comparator country reports them
- 8
- were fitted too poorly to interpret
- labelled as such, not quietly used
The strongest argument this site can make is not that every number favours one side. It is that the method was fixed before the results were seen, and applied the same way to each. Observed improvement is also not the same thing as policy causation — a counterfactual can show that India moved differently from comparable countries, not why.