

Comparing Indian states with countries - gopi
http://www.economist.com/content/indian-summary

======
bguthrie
The comparison isn't just economic. As a visitor, many things made more sense
to me when I started seeing India through the lens of a confederation of mini-
nations rather than a unified country in the American or European sense. Far
more so than in America, each individual state has distinct cultures,
cuisines, and languages. Historically many of them were once kingdoms
themselves, which contributes to the sense of distinct identity.

~~~
roundsquare
On top of that, there is still a fairly large amount of animosity between the
regions (e.g. North Indians vs. South Indians).

~~~
jeez
The animosity is kind of blurring now, at least in South India. We have
Bangalore and Hyderabad which are excellent examples of a super-heterogeneous
population, running as one big machine. Chennai's trying, but hasn't gotten
there yet. ;)

~~~
sundarurfriend
The population is heterogeneous, but there's still a fair amount of distrust
and alienation between north and south Indians. However, I agree that that's
still a step forward from the "animosity" of the previous generation.

~~~
roundsquare
Fair enough. "Animosity" might have been the wrong word. I didn't mean to
imply that there hadn't been any progress on this front.

------
jeez
Thought this might be relevant. There was a recent discussion on freelance job
rates and the OP was worried that bids for US$10 per hour by people from India
(etc) will make it hard for him to make higher bids.

Consider this. Working at $13 an hour, it equates to ~Rs.650. 650 * 25(days of
working in a month) * 12 = Rs1,95,000 per annum, for working an hour a day. If
I managed 3 hours of work at that 'cheap' rate, I'd be one of the highest
earning person among my friends [who have all graduated in CS and work in
various IT companies.] Pretty awesome to have a cheap economy, right? :)

~~~
alexgartrell
Speaking of the cheap economy, how does it effect things like consumer
electronics? Would you expect to pay $1,500 USD on a MacBook pro, or is stuff
like that also cheaper in India?

~~~
bjelkeman-again
If I remember correctly a MacBook in Bangalore cost about the same as it did
in Stockholm.

MRP Rs. 60,900/- Indian Rupee (about US$ 1350)
<http://www.priceindia.in/laptop/apple-macbook-price/>

Apple Store US for the same seems to be about US$1200.

~~~
rrrazdan
You are confusing Macbook and Macbook Pro. Macbook Pro is 70k rupees or 1560
USD, which means 360 dollars more than the US. Also at this price, it is more
than 1.5 months salary for me, and I earn above average for my level. So
purchasing power parity wise, its much more expensive.

------
throw_away
equivalent map for the US (but without gdp per capita comparisons):
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_us_states_countries)

------
ajju
This is one of those articles where the graphic does a disservice to the
content of the article, which has its own glaring problems. Not only that,
they seem to be using absolute GDP numbers which are meaningless, because a $1
goes a much longer way in U.P. than it does in NYC. At the very least they
should have used PPP numbers. Some glaring problems:

1) As the content of the article points out, Uttar Pradesh is the most
populous state in India. This is why comparing them to Qatar in the graphic,
just on the basis of similar absolute GDP numbers, is very misleading. Qatar's
population is under 1.5M. Uttar Pradesh's population is nearly 200M.

2) Comparing Gujarat to Angola is like comparing the Silicon Valley Bay area
to an arbitrary African country based on similar GDPs. Gujarat has one of the
best infrastructure setups in all of India and has been amongst the fastest
growing states for the past decade.

3) Almost all of Maharashtra's $175B GDP comes from the city of Mumbai. So if
you want a comparison to Singapore, you should look at the city of Mumbai, not
the state of Maharashtra.

~~~
rweba
They used PPP for the GDP per person comparison (but not for the GDP)

They are not trying to say Qatar is generally comparable to Uttar Pradesh,
just pointing out that it has the same nominal GDP. This can be interpreted in
any number of ways but that is all that the chart claims to show.

And of course they did a similar thing with United States and China:

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_us_states_countries)

<http://www.economist.com/content/chinese_equivalents>

------
trafficlight
Not all that helpful because I don't have a feel for the size/wealth of any of
those countries either.

~~~
bdhe
Not very surprising because India is 10th by GDP (4th by GDP(PPP)) and has 28
states. On an average each state would have a GDP of $53 billion, equivalent
countries rank approximately 60th in the world.

A much better comparison is the tab showing population. Look at Uttar Pradesh
(labeled Brazil). It has a population of 199 million, only China, India, US
and Indonesia are more populated. Karnataka (labeled Italy) is the 9th most
populous state but Italy is 4th most populous country in Europe.

------
tokenadult
Equivalent map for China's provinces:

<http://www.economist.com/content/all_parities_china>

~~~
usaar333
It's interesting comparing and contrasting India to China economically. They
both are wildly unequal, with a max 7x of the min. But China is vastly richer;
its poorest state has a GDP per capita equal to that of the whole of India.

------
paulnelligan
the GDP per person chart shows that despite the high rate of development in
India, it's still very much a poor country ...

~~~
iwwr
It's easier to grow fast when you start at a lower base.

------
yalogin
This is what is most worrisome about India. The rich is getting richer and the
middle class is improving but the poor on the whole has not moved a bit. With
the rate the population grows the poor probably regressed. Its a shame because
the outsourcing party is not going to last forever.

~~~
india
How did you arrive at that from the op? India's gini index has been quite
stable[1]. India only makes about 50 billion or so a year in revenue from
outsourcing[2].

[1] <http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2007/wp45_2007.pdf>

[2] [http://www.financialexpress.com/news/indias-outsourcing-
reve...](http://www.financialexpress.com/news/indias-outsourcing-revenue-to-
hit-50-bn/266661/)

------
gopi
The actual GDP will be atleast twice that of the official one as large part of
india's economy is black (off the books)

------
pitdesi
Page 4 of this PDF ranks US Cities (metro regions actually) as if they were
nations. New York City's economy is bigger than Australia or Mexico. Chicago
is bigger than Switzerland or Taiwan.
<http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies/2011/charts.pdf>

India's economy is < 1.5x the New York City metro area

~~~
usaar333
It's actually not that surprising that the New York (metro area) has a larger
economy than Australia; it has almost a million more people!

