Congress leader Jairam Ramesh took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, describing him as "Swayam Udghoshit Vishwaguru", and asked whether during his meetings at the G7 Summit, he would update his Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, on India being the third-largest economy.
Carney had, while justifying his invite to India for the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, later this year, said some countries should be at the table for the discussions at the summit."On May 24th, 2025, while addressing the media following the NITI Aayog meeting chaired by the PM, the CEO of the NITI Aayog had dramatically announced that while he was speaking India had crossed Japan to become the world's third largest economy.
"Now the Canadian PM -- a distinguished professional economist who has been the Governor of the Central Bank of Bank of Canada as well as of the Bank of England -- says that India is the fifth largest economy in the world," Ramesh said in a post on X."Perhaps, India's first SUV -- Swayam Udghoshit Vishwaguru -- can update his Canadian counterpart when the two meet in a few days," Ramesh said.
After inviting Modi to the G7 Summit, Carney said India is the fifth-largest economy and effectively, the most-populous country in the world and central to a number of supply chains and hence, it makes sense to invite the country at the summit.
Modi received the invite for the G7 Summit on Friday and has agreed to participate in it. He has attended the previous five G7 meetings too. India is not a member of the G7, which comprises the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, France, Germany and Japan.
Pertinently, for the last couple of weeks much media space was devoted to discussions around the size of India’s economy relative to other economies of the world. These discussions were based on the new estimates of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of various countries for 2024 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and its annual projections from 2025 till 2030.
As per these projections, India’s GDP in 2025 was likely to be $4,187.03 billion, which will be marginally higher than the GDP of Japan at $4,186.43 billion. So these discussions have stirred the political pot as well. Government sources attributed the improved rank to the leadership capabilities of the Prime Minister. It was also argued that India could grow to be the third largest economy of the world in 2028, and a high-income, developed country (viksit bharat) by 2047.
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