After 25 consecutive years of rapid economic growth, India has now finally surpassed the economy of a country that was once its colonizer — Great Britain. India’s economy has surpassed that of the United Kingdom for the first time in the last 150 years! This implies that India now has the fifth largest GDP in the world.

“Once expected to overtake the UK GDP in 2020, the surpass has been accelerated by the nearly 20 per cent decline in the value of the pound over the last 12 months, consequently UK’s 2016 GDP of GBP 1.87 trillion converts to $2.29 trillion at exchange rate of GBP 0.81 per $1, whereas India’s GDP of INR 153 trillion converts to $2.30 trillion at exchange rate of INR 66.6 per $1,” a report published in Forbes Magazine said.

According to Forbes, the country’s economic history for the past 150 years can be broken down to three parts: “a period of divergence, a period of relative stagnation, and a period of convergence (with the U.K.’s economy)”.