[In This Economy] Lessons from my short trip to India

Last week, I had the opportunity to go to New Delhi in India to give a talk in a conference of social science associations in the Indo-Pacific.

It was my first time going to India, and right after I told some close friends about my trip, I received one warning after the other. Wear a mask. Don’t drink water outside the hotel. Don’t eat street food. Beware of pickpockets.

If you spend enough time on TikTok, you’ll see lots of dramatic warnings about traveling to India. Some parts of my experience matched those, others challenged them. But at any rate, I wanted to go anyway because I’ve never visited that part of the world, and with a population of 1.4 billion now (larger than China) I felt I was missing out on many things. I had to see India for myself.

The first thing that struck me was the air pollution. Even on the plane, approaching Delhi at night, we zoomed past one city after the next but with the city lights were blurred by smog.

Upon arriving, the wind was chilly (it was winter) and the cold air made the dust settle close to the ground. Something like Baguio, but colder. We were told by a local that it was in fact the worst season where air pollution was concerned. When I checked my phone, the Air Quality Index was consistently “very poor.” Almost everywhere you look, the otherwise green trees are brown because of a thick blanket of dust. As an asthmatic myself, I had to make sure I had my mask on at all times.

India was also rather chaotic. Just like Manila, the traffic is a free-for-all, with vehicles and pedestrians going any which way. But New Delhi was even more chaotic. The amount of honking in the streets was also intense: there’s almost a permanent beep that rends the air.

I realized very quickly that in some of the areas we walked through, it didn’t feel very safe for women. As we walked downtown, a huge majority of the men we passed openly stared at my female friend’s arms, in a way that felt intrusive and uncomfortable.

The vendors and hawkers around the tourist spots were far more persistent than what I’m used to in the Philippines. Our tour guide at the Taj Mahal told us that the trick was to never look them in the eye, even for a second. Just ignore them. True enough, a Vietnamese colleague who did small talk with one of the vendors was badgered for about 5 minutes straight-

Security checks were extremely strict, both at the Taj Mahal and at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. Bags were thoroughly inspected, electronics taken out, and there were multiple layers of passport and boarding pass checks. They were clearly designed with security in mind, but undeniably tiring after a long day.

Dynamic and fast-growing economy

I braced myself for some culture shock. But that’s just one side of the story. As an economist, I was truly fascinated by the growth and dynamism of the Indian economy. We Filipinos can certainly learn a thing or two from them.

Both the Philippines and India are currently lower-middle income countries, and the average income in the Philippines is still a bit higher at $4,470 (compared to India’s $2,670). But India’s economy is fast catching up. For 2025, GDP growth is expected at an amazing 7.2%, and for 2026 it’s projected at 6.5%.

They have a robust service-driven economy, and their business process outsourcing sector is giving our own BPO firms a run for their money. Micro, small, and medium enterprises are a major backbone of the Indian economy, and before the pandemic MSMEs they already accounted for more than 30% of the economy. Digital payments have boomed in India, too, nudged by a demonetization episode back in 2016.

The government also poured a lot of money into public works to minimize the infrastructure gap. Sure, that means so much more dust during the winter season (especially in northern India) but that has also meant greater connectivity between India’s cities and provinces. I was surprised how straightforward the journey was from New Delhi to Agra (where the majestic Taj Mahal is): the trip took more than 3 hours, but the expressway was almost literally a straight line, and the journey couldn’t be smoother.

Innovation is also key to India’s growth. A sizable portion of Indian students go into science and engineering programs, and by one account India already accounts for 28% of the global STEM workforce and 23% of the global engineering talent. Some of the top universities in the Global North are also dominated by Indians, many of whom return to India to put their knowledge to good use back at home. India has also produced some of the world’s top economists, including Nobel winner Amartya Sen and former IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath.

One time, when we were driving back to New Delhi, along the expressway there’s a huge red neon sign on a massive university building saying: “Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Block.” This I think is emblematic of how much India is leaning in on the latest IT technologies.

The combination of fast growth, urbanization, investment in physical infrastructure, investment in education, particularly STEM, and structural transformation toward high-productivity services has led to very rapid poverty reduction. 

Back in 2011–2012, more than half of Indians lived below the poverty line ($4.20 per day). Fast-forward to 2022–2023, poverty has gone down to 23.9%. Sure, that’s still a lot of people (for a population of 1.4 billion), but this rate of decline is impressive — and certainly better than the Philippine record.

That’s the thing we could learn from them. In the Philippines, fast growth has translated to some degree of poverty reduction, but not nearly enough. India has done a far better job at this.

Finally, it’s amazing how India can pull itself together despite the great diversity of cultures and religions and languages in this country. Indians are said to be “argumentative” (as captured by the title of one of Amartya Sen’s books), and they know how to assert themselves. That can come off as disruptive to some people, but order emerges out of chaos.

All in all, I learned tons from my trip to India, and I’m very glad I went. It was polluted and chaotic but also vibrant and diverse and electric. Not too many Filipinos list India in their bucket list, but if you have the chance, go. There’s so much to learn from India and the way they do things. – Rappler.com

JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan).