eli5 The link given below is India’s gdp status from ancient times till 1990 (from wikipedia). Why does India have very low avg GDP growth till around 1990 even though India was a super power in the ancient times? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India
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GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services—that is, those that are bought by the final user—produced in a country in a given period of time. Basically, the _surplus_ goods/labor that you have available to sell. If a country doesn’t have thriving trade – people primarily work for the subsistence of their own families or groups – then GDP will be low despite how hard those folks are working because they don’t have “extra” that makes it to the marketplace. One of the main criticisms of GDP as a metric is that it chronically undercounts substance activities.
Moreover, the chart you present in GDP _per capita_ – i.e. the total GDP of a country divided by the number of people in said economy to get the _average_ economic contribution of each person. If most folks in a country are engaged in activities not captured by GDP metrics well (i.e. subsistence farming) then GDP per capita will be very low.
Almost every country’s chart looks like that – it wasn’t until the 20th century that trade really took off and people _bought_ most of what they needed vs. made. Case in point, here is the [US’s GDP per capita](https://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f08003883401a511e2f5ad970c-pi) – it doesn’t really take off until the mid 1930’s.
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