Economy of India in the context of Supercomputing in India

Balance of trade is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports of goods over a certain time period. Sometimes, trade in services is also included in the balance of trade but the official IMF definition only considers goods. The balance of trade measures a flow variable of exports and imports over a given period of time. The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other.

If a country exports a greater value than it imports, it has a trade surplus or positive trade balance, and conversely, if a country imports a greater value than it exports, it has a trade deficit or negative trade balance. As of 2016, about 60 out of 200 countries have a trade surplus. The world's largest trade surpluses are held by China ($823 billion), Germany ($226 billion), and Russia ($120 billion), while the largest trade deficits are held by the United States ($1.15 trillion), United Kingdom ($271 billion), and India ($241 billion).

Zoroastrianism, an Iranian religion, has been present in India for thousands of years. Though it split into a separate branch, it shares a common origin with Hinduism and other Indian religions, having been derived from the Indo-Iranian religion. Though it was once the majority and official religion of the Iranian nation, Zoroastrianism eventually shifted to the Indian subcontinent in light of the Muslim conquest of Iran, which saw the Rashidun Caliphate annex the Sasanian Empire by 651 CE. Owing to the persecution of Zoroastrians in the post-Sasanian period, a large wave of Iranian migrants fled to India, where they became known as the Parsi people, who now represent India's oldest Zoroastrian community. Later waves of Zoroastrian immigration to India took place over the following centuries, with a spike in the number of these refugees occurring during the Safavid conversion of Iran to Shia Islam and again during the reign of the Qajar dynasty, whose persecution of Zoroastrians prompted many to flee to British India, where they became known as the Irani people. Though Zoroastrian, the Parsis and the Iranis are culturally, linguistically, and socially distinct from each other due to their inception in separate periods of migration.

The comparatively liberal atmosphere of India and the protection provided by historical Indian kingdoms to their Zoroastrian subjects enabled the religion to flourish outside of the Iranian plateau. Today, India is home to the largest Zoroastrian population in the world, and despite their overall low population number, Indian Zoroastrians have had a significant impact on India's economy, culture, politics and military, and also played a major role in the Indian independence movement.

An emerging market (EM, also an emerging country or an emerging economy) is a market that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not fully meet its standards. This includes markets that may become developed markets in the future or were in the past. The term "frontier market" is used for developing countries with smaller, riskier, or more illiquid capital markets than "emerging". As of 2025, the economies of China and India are considered the largest emerging markets. The ten largest emerging economies by nominal GDP are 4 of the 9 BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) along with Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Poland. The inclusion of South Korea, Poland, and sometimes Taiwan are debatable, given they are no longer considered emerging markets by the IMF and World Bank (for Korea and Taiwan). If we exclude South Korea, Poland and/or Taiwan, this list of top ten emerging markets would include Argentina and Thailand.

Emerging market economies' share of global PPP-adjusted GDP has risen from 27 percent in 1960 to around 53 percent by 2013. When countries "graduate" from their emerging status, they are referred to as emerged markets, emerged economies or emerged countries, where countries have developed from emerging economy status, but have yet to reach the technological and economic development of developed countries. According to a 2008 article in The Economist, many people find the term "emerging markets" outdated, but no alternate term has gained wide use. Emerging market hedge fund capital reached a record new level in the first quarter of 2011 of $121 billion.

Corruption in India is an issue that affects the economy of central, state, and local government agencies. Corruption is blamed for stunting the economy of India. A study conducted by Transparency International in 2005 recorded that more than 62% of Indians had at some point or another paid a bribe to a public official to get a job done. In 2008, another report showed that about 50% of Indians had first-hand experience of paying bribes or using contacts to get services performed by public offices. In Transparency International's 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), India scored 38. When ranked by score, India ranked 96th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with regional scores, the best score among those countries of the Asia Pacific region that appeared in the Index was 84, the average score was 44 and the worst score was 16. For comparison with worldwide scores, the average score was 43, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), and the worst score was 8 (ranked 180).

Various factors contribute to corruption, including officials siphoning money from government social welfare schemes. Examples include the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the National Rural Health Mission. Other areas of corruption include India's trucking industry, which is forced to pay billions of rupees in bribes annually to numerous regulatory and police stops on interstate highways.

Poverty in India remains a major challenge despite overall reductions in the last several decades as its economy grows. According to an International Monetary Fund paper, extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as living on US$1.9 or less in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, in India was as low as 0.8% in 2019, and the country managed to keep it at that level in 2020 despite the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak.According to the World Bank, India experienced a significant decline in the prevalence of extreme poverty from 22.5% in 2011 to 10.2% in 2019. A working paper of the bank said rural poverty declined from 26.3% in 2011 to 11.6% in 2019. The decline in urban areas was from 14.2% to 6.3% in the same period. The poverty level in rural and urban areas went down by 14.7 and 7.9 percentage points, respectively. According to United Nations Development Programme administrator Achim Steiner, India lifted 271 million people out of extreme poverty in a 10-year time period from 2005–2006 to 2015–2016. A 2020 study from the World Economic Forum found "Some 220 million Indians sustained on an expenditure level of less than Rs 32 / day—the poverty line for rural India—by the last headcount of the poor in India in 2013."

The World Bank has been revising its definition and benchmarks to measure poverty since 1990–1991, with a $0.2 per day income on purchasing power parity basis as the definition in use from 2005 to 2013. Some semi-economic and non-economic indices have also been proposed to measure poverty in India. For example, in order to determine whether a person is poor, the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index places a 33% weight on the number of years that person spent in school or engaged in education and a 6.25% weight on the financial condition of that person.

The mining industry in India is a major economic activity which contributes significantly to the economy of India. The gross domestic product (GDP) contribution of the mining industry varies from 2.2% to 2.5% only but going by the GDP of the total industrial sector, it contributes around 10% to 11%. Even mining done on small scale contributes 6% to the entire cost of mineral production. Indian mining industry provides job opportunities to around 700 individuals.

As of 2012, India is the largest producer of sheet mica, 2015 the fourth largest producer of iron ore, alumina, chromite, and bauxite in the world. A coal and iron ore project is in the fifth largest reserve in world. India's metal and mining industry was estimated to be $106.4 billion in 2010.

Damodar River (Pron: /ˈdʌmoˌdaː/) is a river flowing across the Indian states of Jharkhand and West Bengal. The valley is rich in mineral resources and is known for large-scale mining and industrial activity. It was also known as the Sorrow of Bengal because of the ravaging floods it caused in the plains of West Bengal. The construction of several dams on the Damodar and its tributaries has helped control some of the flooding.

The Five-Year Plans of India were a series of national development programmes implemented by the Government of India from 1951 to 2017. Inspired by the Soviet model, these plans aimed to promote balanced economic growth, reduce poverty and modernise key sectors such as agriculture, industry, infrastructure and education.

The Planning Commission, chaired ex-officio by the prime minister, conceptualised and monitored the plans until its replacement by the NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) in 2015. The plans evolved to address changing developmental priorities, introducing innovations like the Gadgil formula in 1969 for transparent resource allocation to states. While the five-year plans significantly shaped India's economic trajectory, they were discontinued in 2017, transitioning to a more flexible framework under the NITI Aayog.

1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1991st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 991st year of the 2nd millennium, the 91st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1990s decade.

It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. Towards the end of the year, the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving fifteen sovereign republics and the CIS in its place. In July 1991, India abandoned its policies of dirigisme, license raj and autarky and began extensive liberalisation to its economy. This increased GDP but also increased income inequality over the next two decades. A UN-authorized coalition force from 34 nations fought against Iraq, which had invaded and annexed Kuwait in the previous year, 1990. The conflict would be called the Gulf War and would mark the beginning of a since-constant American military presence in the Middle East. The clash between Serbia and the other Yugoslav republics would lead into the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars, which ran through the rest of the decade.

Balance of trade is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports of goods over a certain time period. Sometimes, trade in services is also included in the balance of trade but the official IMF definition only considers goods. The balance of trade measures a flow variable of exports and imports over a given period of time. The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other.

If a country exports a greater value than it imports, it has a trade surplus or positive trade balance, and conversely, if a country imports a greater value than it exports, it has a trade deficit or negative trade balance. As of 2016, about 60 out of 200 countries have a trade surplus. The world's largest trade surpluses are held by China ($823 billion), Germany ($226 billion), and Singapore ($154 billion), while the largest trade deficits are held by the United States ($1.15 trillion), United Kingdom ($271 billion), and India ($241 billion).

Part XVIII of the Constitution of India allows for a constitutional setup that can be proclaimed by the president of India as a state of emergency, when the consultant group perceives and warns against grave threats to the nation from internal and external sources or from financial situations of crisis. Under Article 352 of the Indian constitution, upon the advice of the cabinet of ministers, the President can overrule many provisions of the constitution, which can suspend fundamental rights to the citizens of India and acts governing devolution of powers to the states which form the federation. In the history of independent India, such a state of emergency has been declared thrice.

1. The first instance was between 26 October 1962 to 21 November 1962 during the India-China war, when "the security of India" was declared as being "threatened by external aggression".
2. The second instance was between 3 and 17 December 1971, which was originally proclaimed during the Indo-Pakistan war.
3. The third proclamation between 25 June 1975 to January 1977 was under controversial circumstances of political instability under Indira Gandhi's premiership, when emergency was declared on the basis of "internal disturbances". The proclamation immediately followed a ruling in the Allahabad High Court, that voided the Prime Minister's election from Rae Bareli in the 1971 Indian general election. She was also prohibited from contesting election for next 6 years, challenging her legitimacy to continue in her post. Indira Gandhi, instead recommended to the then president Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to proclaim a state of emergency to strengthen her hand.

The phrase Emergency period used loosely, when referring to the political history of India, often refers to this third and the most controversial of the three occasions.

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) is an independent private limited entity that serves both as an economic think-tank as well as a business information company. CMIE research group has built databases on the Indian economy and private companies. CMIE provides this information in the form of databases and research reports via a subscription-based business model. It is headquartered in Mumbai, with additional offices in India.