How to read this

Four things worth knowing before you argue with anyone using these numbers.

A rank is not a grade

India ranks 131st of 193 on the Human Development Index. That is the middle of the pack, not the bottom — and the score has climbed steadily for thirty years. A rank tells you where a country sits in a crowd. The trend tells you which way it is walking. Read both.

Higher is not always better

Some scores run backwards. Reporters Without Borders publishes an abuse score where a low number means a free press — Norway scores about 7, North Korea about 81. Unemployment, inflation and infant mortality are all better when small. Every page here states which way is good and colours the trend to match, so a rising line is never mistaken for good news.

Different measures, different clocks

Inflation arrives monthly, GDP yearly, and the Human Development Index runs about two years behind. A 2023 date next to a figure means that is the latest year the publisher has released — not a stale fetch. Each measure shows both when the source last published and when this app last pulled it.

Nothing here is adjusted

No smoothing, no re-basing, no estimates of our own. Where a series covers India only — the monthly inflation numbers, for instance — no ranking is shown, because inventing a peer group would be worse than leaving it out. Raw totals like population and GDP in dollars carry no rank either: they track how big a country is, not how well it is doing.

Where the numbers come from

Back to the scoreboard