India's economy combines a large domestic demand base with a services export anchor. The IT and business process services sector generates substantial foreign exchange and employs a high-skill segment of the workforce. Capital circulation is uneven: formal sector productivity is high, but the majority of the labour force operates in low-productivity agriculture and informal services. This duality is the defining structural feature. Demand is partly self-sustaining through domestic consumption, which provides resilience against external shocks that smaller open economies lack. The primary constraints are capital allocation efficiency — the gap between available capital and productive deployment — and state capacity variance across regions and administrative layers. India's structural trajectory depends on whether the formal economy can absorb the labour currently held in low-productivity sectors at sufficient speed.
15–16 pages. Structured orientation — no background reading required.