India’s economic aspirations now place it in direct competition with the world’s most advanced economies—the United States and China—according to Jayant Sinha, former chairman of Parliament’s finance committee and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Speaking on India Today TV, Sinha stressed that India must stop benchmarking itself against developing nations and instead measure progress against global leaders.

He highlighted the stark productivity gap by comparing India with the US, where a population of around 350 million generates nearly $30 trillion in GDP, translating to roughly $93,000 per capita annually. This, he noted, is the outcome of decades of investment in education, technology, capital, and advanced tools that significantly enhance worker productivity.

Sinha also pointed to China’s rapid progress in high-end innovation, citing AI model DeepSeek as evidence of how scale and focused investment can quickly translate into global technological leadership. For India to compete, he said, productivity must rise dramatically through better education systems, modern curricula, digital and technical skills, infrastructure upgrades, access to capital, and advanced computing and AI capabilities.

According to Sinha, the success of the Union Budget 2026 should be judged by whether it enables Indians to produce more, innovate faster, and compete at the same level as workers and firms in advanced economies. India’s economic race, he concluded, is now firmly against the US and China—and closing that gap will require bold, sustained reforms.