downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 228174.31articles per million people
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
- History
India
Strongest usable evidence: Adaptability, at 82.4. Raise Experimentation first, at 12.0. Shared Purpose needs more evidence: confidence is 0.38.
Raise, lowest first
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Experimentation | 0.53 | 12.0 |
| Learning | 0.55 | 21.7 |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 34.5 |
| Trust | 0.50 | 45.3 |
| Agency | 0.56 | 46.0 |
Measure before managing
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Purpose | 0.38 | 63.2 |
| Coordination | 0.41 | 82.0 |
These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.
Why this country is included: Large, diverse emerging economy with significant bottom-up capability.
Anticipation34.5Confidence0.46usableHow capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
India
Read India beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.
- Usable or good evidence
- Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
- The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
- Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.
A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.
| Adaptability | 0.46 | 3 of 6 | 1.00 | no trend | 61.0 | -21.4 | |
| Coordination | 0.41 | 3 of 5 | 0.86 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Shared Purpose | 0.38 | 3 of 6 | 0.83 | -1.4(2) | 50.0 | -13.2 | |
| Building | 0.57 | 4 of 6 | 0.90 | +7.9(3) | no data | no estimate | |
| Agency | 0.56 | 4 of 5 | 0.75 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Trust | 0.50 | 5 of 7 | 0.85 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 2 of 4 | 0.96 | +8.7(2) | 46.0 | +11.5 | |
| Learning | 0.55 | 3 of 4 | 0.81 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Experimentation | 0.53 | 6 of 9 | 0.88 | +3.1(3) | no data | no estimate |
How to read this page
Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.
A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.
- direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
- capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
- downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
- perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.
Confidence
- very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
- thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
- usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
- good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.
A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.
Anticipation
How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
+8.7 over 10 years, from 25.8 in 2016 to 34.5 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 73.718index 0-100
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
- History
Government foresight capacity
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.
Long-horizon research commitments
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of new grants
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2020
0.65 % of GDP, rank 53 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2020
259 per million people, rank 76 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
1,212 per million people, rank 66 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 46.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Hold with a small rise: the India Meteorological Department's cyclone warning system is an institutional success that cut mortality, and ISRO, the nuclear establishment and NITI Aayog are durable anticipatory bodies. The census delayed since 2021 and disputes over survey data weaken the statistical base, which keeps me below panelist B.
- 47.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Per-head article counts understate a large absolute research, space and meteorological system, and cyclone warning has sharply cut mortality; I lower slightly because the delayed census and disputed survey data, raised by both others, are a real weakening of the state's own sight.
- 41.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Both panelists note absolute research scale, space and cyclone warning as conversion of modest resources; I raise a little, but the delayed census and disputed survey data are capability failures, not income effects, so I stay under them.
Agency
How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.175per 1,000 aged 15-64
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 17.47days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 10count
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
- History
Adults doing digital tasks
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 7.2mean 1-10
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2025
70 % of population, rank 86 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
89 % aged 15+, rank 37 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2025
44 % of GDP, rank 64 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan
India's PMGDISHA rural digital-literacy scheme enrolled 73,571,965 people, trained 63,941,718 and certified 47,836,188 by July 2024 through 20 hours of instruction in five digital-task modules.
63,941,718 people, candidates trained under pmgdisha, 2024-07-26. 47,836,188 people, candidates certified under pmgdisha, 2024-07-26. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, retrieved 2026-09-02.
How it worked: MeitY used village-level centres, a standard five-module curriculum and external certifying agencies to move a digital-literacy offer through rural India at household scale, with certificates uploaded to DigiLocker.
Limits: The government reports administrative training and third-party certification totals, not independently tested digital competence or continued use of services. The scheme covered rural areas and one person per targeted household, so it is not a population-wide adult-skills rate; the source also does not report completion quality, attrition or post-training use.
Coordination
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Government effectiveness
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Regulatory quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.
Logistics performance
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 52.12hours
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 98.674percentage points from approved budget
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
- History
University-industry collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Innovation Index
- History
- no data
Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.694index 0-1
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
- History
- one year
Public-private collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 2 records- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2025
2.527 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Unified Payments Interface, the bank-and-app network
NPCI's UPI rail connected 731 live banks and settled 22,716.07 million transactions worth ₹28,92,138.67 crore in June 2026 through participating banks and payment apps.
22,716,070,000 transactions, upi transactions settled in the month, 2026-06. 731 banks, banks live on upi, 2026-06. National Payments Corporation of India, UPI Product Statistics, retrieved 2026-09-02.
How it worked: The Reserve Bank-regulated NPCI set a common protocol and settlement layer while banks and private payment apps competed at the customer interface, allowing one public standard to scale through many firms.
Limits: UPI volume and bank participation show a shared transaction rail, not the quality of public-private coordination across other national objectives. NPCI publishes the figures for the system it operates, the table excludes on-us transactions from August 2018 onward, and volume says nothing about access, fraud, outages or distributional reach.
UDAN regional air connectivity scheme, and its lapsed routes
India's Ministry of Civil Aviation paid viability-gap funding to private airlines to fly underserved regional routes from April 2017. Of the 774 routes awarded in the first three rounds, 371 commenced, and only 174 were still flying in March 2023; only 54 of the 112 routes that completed their three-year concession kept operating afterwards.
174 routes, udan 1 to 3 routes in operation, 2023-03. 371 routes (cumulative), udan 1 to 3 routes that commenced operations, 2023-03. Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Report No. 22 of 2023, Compliance Audit on Regional Connectivity Scheme - UDAN, Ministry of Civil Aviation, retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: The Ministry of Civil Aviation auctioned regional routes to private airlines, paid the winners a viability-gap subsidy for three years funded by a levy on other flights, and asked states and the Airports Authority to revive unused airstrips; most routes did not survive the end of the subsidy.
Limits: The 371 is a cumulative count of routes that ever commenced, not a simultaneous peak, so the fall to 174 overstates how many routes were flying at any one time. Routes from the third round had less time to lapse, which flatters their survival rate. The audit covers UDAN 1 to 3 to March 2021 with route figures updated to March 2023, so later rounds and the scheme's current state are not shown. A lapsed route is a commercial failure for the airline as much as a policy failure, and some routes stopped because airlines collapsed. The figures come from the scheme's own RCS cell, as the audit notes. The 120 page report is a 12 MB PDF and the quoted table is read from text extraction.
Trust
How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Rule of law
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Control of corruption
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 1445days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 8.743% of firms
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 2.613scale 0-4 (never to always)
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
- History
- one year
Intentional homicide rate
downstream outcomeretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataper 100,000 people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
- History
- no data
Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 16.9% agreeing
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
- History
- one year
Trust in public institutions
perception proxyno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% expressing confidence
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD Trust Survey / WVS
- History
- no data
Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 33.4% expressing trust
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
- History
- one year
Court case clearance rate
downstream outcomeno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of incoming cases
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
- History
- no data
Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Confidence in the courtsJoint EVS/WVS (E069_17), 2022
39.7 % a great deal, higher is better. Share of survey respondents saying they have a great deal of confidence in the justice system and courts, of the four answers a great deal, quite a lot, not very much and none at all, in the Joint EVS/WVS 2017 to 2022 survey round.
Confidence in the courts is the public half of what this capability asks: whether people expect the rules to be enforced when a stranger breaks them. It is not scored because the survey answer reads two things the number cannot tell apart. Where courts are independent, confidence is a judgment of how they perform. Where they answer to the state, it is also deference, and saying otherwise to an interviewer has a cost. In this frame the pattern runs the wrong way. India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all electoral autocracies in the V-Dem 2025 classification, lead on the share saying a great deal, and Vietnam and China, the two closed autocracies surveyed, lead once quite a lot is counted too. The ten electoral autocracies average 21.8 percent saying a great deal and the two closed autocracies 28.1, against 13.6 for liberal and 8.4 for electoral democracies. Scored, it would rank highest the states whose courts are least able to rule against them. Income is not why it is left out: the share correlates about -0.18 with log GDP per capita. The value is the share saying a great deal; the share saying quite a lot is in the source note.
Learning
How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.494index 0-1
- Year
- 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 2.882% of firms
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
- History
Adult learning participation
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
- History
- no data
Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 0.818ratio to world average
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2025
34.4 % gross, rank 82 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2022
4.1 % of GDP, rank 62 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 2019
1.3 % of secondary, rank 113 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
SWAYAM national online-course platform
India's SWAYAM platform offered more than 20,370 courses and recorded more than 65 million enrolments by 12 August 2026 as a national channel for flexible higher-education and skills learning.
65,000,000 enrolments, swayam enrolments, 2026-08-12. 20,370 courses, swayam courses offered, 2026-08-12. Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Empowering Youth, Transforming India, retrieved 2026-09-02.
How it worked: The Ministry of Education assembled university courses on one open platform, letting learners study remotely and connect course participation to formal credit and certification pathways.
Limits: Cumulative enrolment is not a share of adults participating in learning: one person can enrol repeatedly, and the release does not provide active users, completions or the adult/student split. Course supply and enrolment show a national learning channel, not learning gains, labour-market outcomes or equal access to broadband and devices.
Experimentation
How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
+3.1 over 10 years, from 3.7 in 2016 to 6.8 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
+5.0 over 20 years, from 1.8 in 2006 to 6.8 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 26267per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 435581per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 17497per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 17543509per million people
- Year
- 2026. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
- History
- no data
Venture deals
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD / national VC associations
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 12.3% aged 18-64
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
- History
- one year
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 43.2% not deterred
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
- History
- one year
Firms through regulatory sandboxes
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no datafirms per million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national regulators
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.
University spinouts
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national TTO associations
- History
- no data
Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.
Business share of R&D
capability inputretired, see notes- Raw value
- no data% of R&D
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD MSTI / RICYT
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Reserve Bank of India regulatory sandbox
The Reserve Bank of India ran four themed sandbox cohorts between 2020 and 2024, retail payments, cross-border payments, MSME lending and fraud prevention, admitting 28 entities to test and finding 13 products viable in the three cohorts whose exits it published, and keeps the cohorts open on tap.
28 entities, entities admitted to the test phase across four cohorts, 2024. 13 products, products found viable in the first, second and fourth cohorts, 2024. Reserve Bank of India, press release on the exit of the fourth Regulatory Sandbox cohort, 18 June 2024, retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: The RBI published an enabling framework in 2019 and ran the sandbox as themed cohorts, each opened on one policy problem, so the regulator chose the questions and firms competed to answer them; a closed cohort reopens on tap.
Limits: Both numbers are computed from four RBI press releases, not stated in one: six entities admitted and six viable in the first cohort (13 September 2021), eight and four in the second (19 July 2022), eight admitted to the third (6 June 2022) and six admitted with three viable in the fourth (18 June 2024). The third cohort's exit result was not found, so the viable count leaves it out. The regulator is reporting on its own programme, and viable within the boundary conditions of a test is not adoption: the releases say only that regulated entities may consider the products. Twenty-eight entities over four years is small next to India's payments sector, so the record evidences that a working sandbox exists, not that it shaped the market.
Adaptability
How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 4.219% of labour force
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
- History
Long-term unemployment share
downstream outcomemissing- Raw value
- no data% of unemployed
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
- History
- no data
Note: Derived from ILOSTAT unemployment by duration: 12 months or more over the unemployed whose duration is stated, both sexes, age 15 and over, a labour force survey preferred where ILOSTAT holds more than one. Read it beside the unemployment rate, because a high share means two different things: slow reallocation, where people who lose work stay out of it (South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria), or a small residual pool in a tight market, where the few left unemployed are the hardest to place (Switzerland, Japan). Some national questionnaires cannot record a long search, so the adapter runs a plausibility gate on every country: it drops a year under 3%, every year of a survey whose median is under 3%, a one- or two-year spike of more than 15 points that the series returns from, and a latest year that jumps more than 15 points with no later year to confirm it, then emits the latest year that survives. Every dropped value is logged in the source memo. See D120.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.13index 0-1, lower = more diversified
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
- History
- one year
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 6.64% of products not exported competitively at the start
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
- History
- one year
Disaster preparedness and recovery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- INFORM / UNDRR
- History
- no data
Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.
Institutional responsiveness
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
59.1 % aged 15+, rank 107 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
3.2 per 100 people, rank 93 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS), 2023
14.2 % of output, rank 86 of 117. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT), 2025
87.2 % of employment, rank 82 of 102. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
CoWIN national COVID-19 vaccination platform
India used CoWIN to register and scale COVID-19 vaccination nationally, recording more than 2.2067 billion vaccinations and 1.1093 billion registrations by 21 November 2023.
2,206,700,000 vaccinations, covid-19 vaccinations recorded by cowin, 2023-11-21. 1,109,300,000 registrations, cowin registrations, 2023-11-21. Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, Digital Innovations in India's Health Sector, retrieved 2026-09-02.
How it worked: The Union government put registration, appointment, inventory-linked certification and national reporting on one platform, allowing states and vaccination sites to operate against a common record during a fast-moving shock.
Limits: The counts are platform records, not unique people or a measure of protection, equity, adverse events or health outcomes. The ministry's explainer reports the totals itself and does not provide reconciliation rules, regional access gaps or the counterfactual contribution of CoWIN versus the underlying health and logistics system; the emergency programme has also ended.
Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, the free foodgrain response to COVID-19
India's Department of Food and Public Distribution, acting on the Garib Kalyan package announced in March 2020, allocated about 121 lakh tonnes of extra free foodgrains to States on 30 March 2020, and States distributed 37.5 lakh tonnes covering about 75 crore beneficiaries in each of April and May 2020.
75 crore people (about), beneficiaries covered by the extra free grain each month, 2020-04. 111.52 lakh metric tonnes (93.5% of allocation), foodgrains distributed in phase i, april to june 2020, 2020-06. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, release 1643542 (5 August 2020), from Food Corporation of India reports, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The central government doubled the grain ration by order and pushed the extra stock from Food Corporation of India depots through the existing ration-shop network, so no new eligibility system had to be built.
Limits: The figures are the ministry's own, compiled from what States reported to the Food Corporation of India, and are not an audit of what reached households; distribution counts at ration shops are known to include leakage. The scheme worked by adding 5 kg per person to the existing National Food Security Act ration lists, so people outside those lists, including many migrant workers stranded in the 2020 lockdown, were not covered by this channel. The extra entitlement was extended repeatedly and ended in December 2022, when the Cabinet instead made the regular NFSA ration free from January 2023. Speed is read from the release's dates (allocation on 30 March 2020, distribution from April) rather than a timestamped series.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 61.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Raised slightly for panelist C's point that the digital public infrastructure rollout after 2016 shows the state can change course at scale through institutions. I still discount the low unemployment rate, which reads informality rather than labour-market adjustment.
- 66.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Export diversification and new product entry are strong, and households reallocate through informal work, circular migration and fast uptake of digital payments; I discount the unemployment rate as others did but hold above them because informal reallocation is itself adaptive capacity.
- 61.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Unemployment is informality, as all three of us say, so only export diversification and new products carry weight; digital rail rollout is a genuine change of course. I hold near the middle of the range.
Building
How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?
+7.9 over 10 years, from 46.7 in 2016 to 54.6 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 13.471% of GDP
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 18.572% of manufactured exports
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
- History
Logistics infrastructure quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 84.848score 0-100
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 3.477index
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
- History
Large project delivery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 3 records- Raw value
- no data% overrun
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.
Firm scale-up rate
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of firms
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD DynEmp
- History
- no data
Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
24,842 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 85 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana bank accounts
India opened 590.9 million basic bank accounts through existing banks from 2014, holding 3.17 lakh crore rupees in deposits as of 19 August 2026.
590,900,000 accounts, accounts opened under the scheme, 2026-08-19. Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, India, retrieved 2026-08-26.
How it worked: Existing banks were given a national target and a stripped-down account product, and the identity system removed the documentation barrier that had excluded people.
Limits: An account count measures opening. Part of the stock is dormant or holds very little, and the release carries no external audit. Reaching 590 million people through banks that already existed is a different problem from delivering a physical project on a schedule.
Delhi Commonwealth Games, and the cost-estimate escalation
India and Delhi hosted the Commonwealth Games in October 2010, but the Comptroller and Auditor General recorded the total estimate rising from ₹1,200 crore in the May 2003 bid to ₹18,532.31 crore by October 2010.
18,532.31 INR crore, total estimated expenditure by october 2010, 2010-10. 1,200 INR crore, initial bid estimate, 2003-05. Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Performance Audit of XIXth Commonwealth Games, retrieved 2026-09-02.
How it worked: A multi-agency event was delivered against an immovable deadline, but scope changes, late procurement and fragmented governance allowed the budget estimate to expand more than fifteen-fold between the bid and the event.
Limits: The Games were delivered, so this is not a failed event; it documents erosion of the original cost promise. The CAG compares estimates assembled at different stages and scopes, and the October 2010 figure is not a single audited final-cost total. The audit identifies fragmented planning, late decisions and weak controls but does not attribute every rupee of the increase to one cause.
Dedicated Freight Corridors, Eastern and Western
Indian Railways, through the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation, built two freight-only corridors approved by Cabinet in 2008 at ₹28,181 crore and reassessed in 2015 at ₹81,459 crore, and by March 2025 had commissioned 2,741 of their 2,843 route kilometres.
189 % overrun (nominal, computed), increase of the 2015 revised project cost over the 2008 cabinet-approved estimate, computed from cag figures, 2015. 2,741 route km, dedicated freight corridor route kilometres commissioned and operational, of 2,843, 2025-03-19. Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Report No. 22 of 2021 (Railways), para 3.1, Implementation of Dedicated Freight Corridor Project, retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: The Ministry of Railways created a dedicated special-purpose company in 2006 to build freight-only lines alongside the trunk network, financed largely by World Bank and JICA loans, and kept building through large cost revisions until almost the whole length was commissioned.
Limits: The 189% is computed here from two CAG figures; the CAG does not publish it as a percentage. The two estimates are not like for like: the scope changed between them, route lengths were revised upward, the Sonnagar to Dankuni section was added in 2008 and is not part of the corridors now reported as 2,843 km, and both figures are nominal across seven years. The 2015 figure is itself old, and no later audited completion cost is used here. The CAG found avoidable price escalation of ₹2,233.81 crore from delays, contract awards 13 to 25 months late, and a target of March 2017 for the first Eastern section, so the schedule slipped by years, but the report states no single schedule overrun figure. The commissioning figure is a ministry press release, self-reported and unaudited. The PIB page refused an automated fetch tool (HTTP 403) but opened with a standard browser user agent.