India’s path-breaking achievements in 2022 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi have boosted the country’s standing on the global stage.
India under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has witnessed excellent growth in various sectors, strengthening India’s position on the global platform. Below are listed the achievements of India in the year 2022, which have boosted the economy of the nation.
Many of these policies and initiatives were started in the past 8 years and have already propelled India far ahead (or at least close enough) in terms of Global Standings.
India is now a Global Leader in Digital Payments
• Digitising the financial sector and economy is a major goal of the government under its Digital India Policy. Due to concerted efforts of the government, digital payments and transactions have been consistently increasing over the last few years.
• The digital transaction volume increased to 8,840 crore in FY 2021-22 from just 2,071 crore in 2017-18. The digital transaction value increased to 3,021 lakh crore in 2021-22 from just 1,962 lakh crore in 2017-18. Interestingly, UPI was launched only in 2016 and the PM Jan Dhan Yojana, only in August 2014.
• Today, India is the undisputed global leader when it comes to Digital Payments with over 40% of all world digital transactions taking place in India.
• In 2011, China’s volume was over 4 times the volume of India in digital payments. Just a decade later, in 2021, India had not just caught up, but was actually twice the volume of China.
Mission Prarambh: Private Sector Fuels Space Vision
• The government intends to unlock the potential of India’s youth and entrepreneurs and promote private sector activity in space research. The government signed MoUs with private companies for space projects.
• On 18 November 2022, the first private space mission, suborbital space vehicle Vikram-S was successfully launched under the launch which was part of the Mission Prarambh.
• ISRO made history on 18 November 2022 by successfully launching India’s maiden private Vikram-suborbital (VKS) rocket to grace the skies. Skyroot Aerospace launched India’s first privately made rocket, Vikram-S on a suborbital flight. The launch vehicle lifted-off with three payloads from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
Establishing a New Healthcare Paradigm
• The health sector is one of the topmost priorities of the government, in order to ensure better health facilities to the citizens of India and improving the existing healthcare infrastructure in the nation.
• India took a giant leap towards providing accessible and affordable healthcare to the common man with the launch of Ayushman Bharat–Pradhan Mantri Jan AarogyaYojana (AB-PMJAY) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 23 September 2018 at Ranchi, Jharkhand. Under the vision of Ayushman Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Jan AarogyaYojana shall be implemented so that each and every citizen receives his due share of health care. With Ayushman Bharat–Pradhan Mantri Jan AarogyaYojana, the government is taking healthcare protection to a new aspirational level. This is the “world’s largest government funded healthcare program” targeting more than 50 crore beneficiaries. AB-PMJAY, Ayushman Bharat-PM Jan Arogya Yojana, has often been called the world’s largest health insurance scheme.
• Over 19 crore Ayushman cards have been issued across the country. More than 25 crore Ayushman Bharat Health Account numbers have also been generated.
• Over 3.28 crore hospital admissions are authorized under the scheme through a network of over 25,800 Empanelled Healthcare Providers.
Setting Covid Vaccination Standards
• In order to safeguard the vast population of India during the Covid-19 pandemic, India undertook one of the biggest mass vaccination campaigns in the world. Thus, India successfully administered two billion Covid-19 doses by July 2022, in a time period of 18 months. 2,19,99,62,139 doses (2.19 billion) had been administered by the government as on 16 December 2022.
• In addition to that, under Vaccine Maitri, India also supplied vaccines to 100 countries and provided drugs to 150 countries during the Covid pandemic.
• Government’s digital platform CoWIN played the key role in facilitating the government to implement the humongous task of conducting one of the greatest vaccination drives of the world. This got possible because over the past six years, the government has been working to digitize the vaccine supply-chain network of India through the use of mobile technology. For this, the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) was launched by the government in 2015 under the National Health Mission.
Multiple social welfare schemes
• Due to the various social welfare schemes of the government like providing free food grains to the economically weaker sections of the society under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY) and healthcare initiatives like Ayushmann Bharat Yojana, 415 million people of India exited multidimensional poverty.
• The free food grain scheme or the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) was introduced by the Narendra Modi government during the first nationwide lockdown due to Covid-19 in March 2020.
• Under this scheme, the Centre provides 5kg of free food grains per month to the poor. This is in addition to the subsidized (Rs 2-3 per kg) ration provided under the National Food Security Act to families covered under the PDS.
• The scheme which can be availed through the One Nation One Ration Card plan was first introduced from April to June 2020 during the stringent lockdown in India and has been extended six times ever since.
India registers its 100th Unicorn
• In order to achieve the goal of Atmanirbhar Bharat, promoting entrepreneurship has been one of the major targets of the government. Thus, since the launch of the Startup India initiative in 2016, India has witnessed increase in the number of start-ups.
• India has now the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world with 85,703 DPIIT recognised start-ups. In 2022, India became home to over 100 Unicorns. India got its 100th unicorn when neobanking fintech portal, “Open”, raised fresh capital to push up its value to over a billion dollars. The five-year-old Bengaluru-based Neobank raised $50 million in a Series D funding round from IIFL, Singaporean state holding company Temasek, American investment firm Tiger Global and another Indian firm 3one4 Capital. This helped its valuation cross the $1 bn mark. The funding comes just six months after Google, Temasek, Visa, and Japan’s SoftBank invested $100 million in the Neobank startup.
This funding signifies the enthusiasm in the Indian start-up ecosystem, which is the world’s third-largest according to Economic Survey, 2021-22.
Renewable energy: Fuelling the Future
• As the demand for power is constantly increasing, the government has been focusing on promoting energy generation through renewable sources, keeping in mind the sustainable development goals. Today, India is the world’s third largest producer of renewable energy, with 40% of its installed electricity capacity coming from non-fossil fuel sources.
• The first eight months of 2022 saw a 22% rise in renewable energy installations compared to the previous eight months of last year. 22% rise was reported in solar installations in Jan-Aug 2022.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India is committed to achieving net-zero carbon emission by 2070. Still, developed nations must deliver on their promises on climate finance. “It’s need of hour to put pressure on those countries that have failed to deliver on their promises about climate finance,” Modi said, delivering his national statement at the COP26 Climate Change Summit in Glasgow on 2 November 2021.
• India has come up with a timeline for reaching net-zero or carbon neutrality for the first time, but the target date of 2070 is twenty years later than developed countries have been pushing for. Net-zero emission is reached when all man-made greenhouse gas emissions are removed from the atmosphere through reduction measures helping global temperature to stabilise.
• When India took the ambitious pledge of achieving 450 GW installed capacity by 2030 through non-fossil fuel sources, it was seen as over-ambitious. Now, India is not only on track to achieve this target, but India has decided to further raise it to 500 GW. India has also pledged to fulfil 50% of its energy requirements from renewables by 2030.
G20 chair: success in Leadership
• India on 1 December 2022 assumed the G20 Presidency for one year and will convene the G20 Leaders’ Summit for the first time in the country in 2023. Around 200 events will be held across India.
• India will preside over the group which represents more than 80% of world GDP, 75% of international trade and 60% of the world’s population, which will give India greater opportunity to present its vision for a reformed multilateral order and climate consciousness.
• India’s G20 presidency comes at a time when the world is witnessing tough circumstances and multiple challenges, but New Delhi’s reputation is likely to bring consensus among nations on finding viable solutions to core issues of economic stability and world amity as the world is staring at geo-political and geo-economic challenges.
• During India’s G20 presidency, there are many issues that India will address: economic stability, climate change, the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2030 goals, energy and health security, food, fertilisers and fuel security, amid the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war that has badly hit the economy across continents.
• India will host over 200 meetings in over 50 cities across 32 different workstreams and would have the opportunity to offer G20 delegates and guests a glimpse of India’s rich cultural heritage and provide them with a unique Indian experience.
Economy: Making It to the World’s Top 5
• This year, India overtook the UK to become the fifth largest economy in the world. Surpassing the UK to become the world’s fifth largest economy is special because India has left behind those who ruled it for 250 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on 5 September 2022. “The pleasure of surpassing the UK, who ruled over India for approximately 250 years supersedes the mere statistics of improved ranking from the sixth largest to the fifth largest economy. It is special,” he said. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections, India has overtaken the UK to become the world’s fifth-largest economy and is now behind only the US, China, Japan and Germany.
• While the global economy is facing huge rise in inflation due to various factors (ranging from 91.6% in Argentina to 103% in Turkey), India has successfully controlled food inflation at 7%, while scoring the highest GDP growth (6.1% in 2023), as forecasted by the IMF’s World Economic Outlook.
• The Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF) praised India as “bright spot in a dark horizon”, as the nation’s economy was developing amidst various countries witnessing slowdown in economic growth.
• As recently as on 10 December 2022, venture capitalist and co-founder of US-based pet services platform Wag! Brendan Rogers, who travelled to 10 countries in 2022, said that India is a great destination for investment and the present century belongs to India. In a LinkedIn post, Rogers said, “In 2022, I travelled to 10 countries. Telling the world why it is India’s century. I was fortunate to be a keynote speaker in front of hundreds of investors who have the ability to invest in Indian founders.” He said India is the youngest country in the world with an average age of 28. He said India is the second-largest internet user base.
• World Bank Country Director in India Auguste Tano Kouame recently said that the Indian economy has been remarkably resilient despite a challenging external environment and the country’s government through its policy reforms and prudent regulatory measures has played a key role and is putting a lot of effort to make the economy dynamic. The World Bank’s latest India Development Update, titled “Navigating the Storm” released in December 2022 states that while the deteriorating external environment will weigh on India’s growth prospects, the country’s economy is relatively well positioned to weather global spill-overs compared to most other emerging markets.
Exports on the rise
• Due to the Make in India policy of the government since 2014, India’s military equipment imports are on a steady decline for the past few years. In 2021-22, defence exports from India increased to Rs 14,000 crore from Rs 900 crore in 2014.
• Although India has a rich legacy of toy making, in the last few decades India imported toys from other nations on a large scale, while indigenous toys didn’t find proper markets. However, due to the various initiatives of the government since 2014, the situation for Indian toy makers improved a lot. The exports of toys increased by 61.38% in the last three years, while the import of toys reduced by 70% in the last three years.
• Between August 2021 and August 2022, the exports of India have increased by $3.2B (9.51%) from $33.7B to $36.9B. India reported increase in exports to United States ($514M or 11.6%), South Africa ($494M or 166%), and Australia ($293M or 142%).
• India reported overall export (Merchandise and Services combined) of USD 58.22 Billion in November 2022. The exports exhibited a positive growth of 10.97% over the same period last year.