One country, many economies.

Per-capita net state domestic product is everything produced inside a state in a year, less the wear on its machines and buildings, divided by the people who live there. It is the closest thing to an average income each state publishes, but it measures production, not what people take home: a factory's profits count where the factory stands, even when its owners live elsewhere.

Divide by 365 to get a feel for it. A figure of ₹73,000 is about ₹200 a day per person, before anyone has paid for food, rent or school fees, and before the money is split, very unequally, between wages, profits and taxes.

A ratio compares only the two ends. The spread across all states, measured by how far the typical state sits from the average, tells the same story more fully; it is in the note beside this one and in the data. Both count every state once, whatever its size: Sikkim weighs as much as Uttar Pradesh.

A falling multiple means poorer states grew a little faster in percentage terms. The rupee distance can still widen. Ten per cent of a large income is more rupees than twelve per cent of a small one, which is why the gap can close and widen at the same time.

Gross state domestic product is the value of everything produced inside a state's borders in a year, at the prices of that year. It is the state's own version of GDP, and the measure behind every claim that one state is "a trillion-dollar economy".

Size and prosperity are different questions. Uttar Pradesh is one of the largest economies here and one of the poorest per person, because it is home to more people than almost any country in the world. Goa and Sikkim are small economies and among the richest per person.

Each dot is one state's average yearly growth over thirteen years, after removing price increases. Over that span, a state growing at 7% a year doubles its economy in about ten years; one growing at 5% takes about fourteen. Small differences in yearly growth add up to large differences in where a state ends up.

The span includes the 2020-21 lockdown year, when nearly every state's economy shrank, and the rebound after it. A state that fell less and recovered fast looks better here than one that grew faster before 2020.

Economists call it convergence: poorer places growing faster than richer ones, so that the distance shrinks over time. The correlation in the corner measures how strongly the dots slope. Minus one would mean every poorer state grew faster; zero means income in 2011-12 tells you nothing about growth since; plus one would mean the rich pulled away.

Growth here is per person, so a state whose population grows fast needs faster growth of its economy just to stand still.

Gross value added is what each industry adds to the materials it buys: a mill's value added is its cloth less its cotton, power and dyes. The shares say where a state's income is made, not where its people work. Farming's share of value added is far smaller than its share of jobs in almost every state, which is the arithmetic behind low farm incomes.

Read across a row to see one state's economy; read down a column to see which states lean on an industry. The real estate column also holds professional services, software among them, and the rent people would pay on homes they own, an imputed figure; that is why it is largest where software and business services cluster. Mining stands out where there are minerals, coal or oil, as in Assam, Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh; Goa's iron ore mining has been largely shut since 2018. Public administration is large where the government is the main employer, as in the north-east, Jammu and Kashmir and the island territories.

A state's debt is what its government owes: market loans, loans from the centre, and the provident funds and deposits it holds for others. Set against the size of its economy, it says how heavy the load is. Each state's own fiscal responsibility law sets its deficit limit, usually 3% of GSDP, and the centre has allowed more in some years.

Interest on that debt comes before roads, schools and hospitals. A state that owes a large share of its GSDP spends a large share of its revenue on interest, which is money it cannot spend on its people.