Q.Discuss the trends in national income and the changes in the sectoral composition of the Indian economy since independence.

India's economy has grown substantially since independence, but the more important structural story is which sector produces that growing income.

At independence, agriculture and allied activities accounted for roughly half of India's national income, reflecting a predominantly agrarian economy with limited industrial or service infrastructure. Over the decades of planned development, industry's share rose as the country built up manufacturing, mining, and construction capacity, particularly through the public-sector-led industrialisation of the early Five Year Plans and, later, private investment following the 1991 reforms.

The most striking and sustained change, however, has been the rise of the services (tertiary) sector — trade, transport and communication, banking and finance, information technology, and public administration — which today generates the largest share of India's Gross Value Added, ahead of industry, with agriculture's share having fallen to under a fifth (exact shares shift slightly with each year's provisional and revised NSO estimates, so a single year's percentage should always be read as approximate rather than fixed). …

Students sometimes assume industry is now the largest sector — in India's case it is services, not industry, that dominates Gross Value Added. Another common gap is failing to mention the workforce-versus …