Illustration by Soniya Pondcar
In 2025, India’s economy saw a series of challenges mainly powered by external pressures—US tariffs that threw markets into turmoil—and internal stresses marked by flawed growth indicators, uneven private investment, and high unemployment. The year redrew the line between security and precarity, determining who gained from expansion and who bore the costs of inflation and joblessness.
The stories in this package trace manufacturing ambitions colliding with weak domestic demand, the limits of welfare delivery as public capacity shrinks, and the lived realities of farmers and migrant workers. They also situate India within a fragmenting global economy reshaped by wars, neighbourhood conflicts, and supply-chain shifts.
Frontline has curated ten of its most incisive economics stories from the year to offer a comprehensive view of the pressures, contradictions, and choices shaping India’s economic trajectory.