| Metric (latest available) | United States | India |
|---|---|---|
| Population (2025) | 341.1 million Census.gov | 1.464 billion Statistics Times |
| Broad money stock | US $ 21.76 trn (M2, Mar 2025) FRED | ₹ 266.48 trn (M3, Jan 2025) Trading Economics |
| Money per person | ≈ US $ 63,800 | ≈ ₹ 182,000 (≈ US $ 2,190 @ ₹ 83/US$) |
| YoY growth (“printing”) | 4.1 % (Mar 2025) The Motley Fool | 9.6 % (May 2025) Investing.com |
Reserve-currency demand – Around 60 % of global FX reserves are held in USD, and more than half of world trade is invoiced in dollars. A large slice of the $21 trillion M2 therefore circulates outside U.S. borders.
Credit-heavy financial system – U.S. commercial banks create sizeable deposit money via lending, inflating M2 totals.
Safe-haven flows – During crises, investors accumulate dollars, expanding offshore (“euro-dollar”) balances that still show up in broad-money aggregates.
By contrast the rupee remains largely domestic; cross-border INR demand is limited to regional trade experiments and the RBI’s small-scale efforts to invoice some commodity imports in rupees.
U.S. moderation: After the pandemic-era surge (26 % YoY in early 2021) the Fed’s balance-sheet runoff has cooled M2 growth to roughly 4 %, trimming liquidity but also easing debasement fears.
India’s rapid expansion: Structural credit demand and a higher inflation tolerance keep M3 growth near 10 %, double the U.S. pace. That supports India’s real-GDP momentum but can weigh on the INR if productivity fails to keep up.
Even with talk of “de-dollarisation,” the per-capita gap is still ~30× in local-currency terms or ~29× when you convert INR to USD. Alternatives—yuan settlement lines, gold-linked payment rails, even India’s own digital-rupee pilot—chip away at marginal USD usage but haven’t dented the core demand for deep, liquid U.S. Treasury markets.
Dollar dominance persists: There are simply far more dollars per human being than rupees per Indian, reflecting decades of network effects in trade and finance.
Watch the growth trends: India’s faster money expansion can amplify inflation and currency-depreciation risk; slower U.S. growth tightens global liquidity but stabilises purchasing power.
Diversification is rational—but partial: Holding a basket that mixes INR, USD, and hard-asset hedges can smooth shocks, yet most portfolios will still need some dollar exposure as long as trade invoicing and reserve management stay USD-centric.