This is one of those articles where the graphic does a disservice to the content of the article, which has its own glaring problems. Not only that, they seem to be using absolute GDP numbers which are meaningless, because a $1 goes a much longer way in U.P. than it does in NYC. At the very least they should have used PPP numbers. Some glaring problems:
1) As the content of the article points out, Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India. This is why comparing them to Qatar in the graphic, just on the basis of similar absolute GDP numbers, is very misleading. Qatar's population is under 1.5M. Uttar Pradesh's population is nearly 200M.
2) Comparing Gujarat to Angola is like comparing the Silicon Valley Bay area to an arbitrary African country based on similar GDPs. Gujarat has one of the best infrastructure setups in all of India and has been amongst the fastest growing states for the past decade.
3) Almost all of Maharashtra's $175B GDP comes from the city of Mumbai. So if you want a comparison to Singapore, you should look at the city of Mumbai, not the state of Maharashtra.
They used PPP for the GDP per person comparison (but not for the GDP)
They are not trying to say Qatar is generally comparable to Uttar Pradesh, just pointing out that it has the same nominal GDP. This can be interpreted in any number of ways but that is all that the chart claims to show.
And of course they did a similar thing with United States and China:
1) As the content of the article points out, Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India. This is why comparing them to Qatar in the graphic, just on the basis of similar absolute GDP numbers, is very misleading. Qatar's population is under 1.5M. Uttar Pradesh's population is nearly 200M.
2) Comparing Gujarat to Angola is like comparing the Silicon Valley Bay area to an arbitrary African country based on similar GDPs. Gujarat has one of the best infrastructure setups in all of India and has been amongst the fastest growing states for the past decade.
3) Almost all of Maharashtra's $175B GDP comes from the city of Mumbai. So if you want a comparison to Singapore, you should look at the city of Mumbai, not the state of Maharashtra.