On Tuesday, the World Bank said that India has halved its poverty rate since the 1990s and achieved a seven-plus growth rate over the last 15 years.

Ahead of its annual meeting with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank said that India is critical to global development efforts which include the elimination of extreme poverty and addressing climate change issues.

The World Bank said that the country has shown strong improvements in most human development outcomes.

However, it pointed out that despite the fact that India's growth is expected to continue and elimination of extreme poverty in the decade is within reach, the country's development trajectory faces considerable challenges.

For this, the World Bank said, India will need to achieve greater resource efficiency as it sustains growth, given its resource endowments and large population. Land in urban areas will need to be used more productively by the spatial transformation of cities to achieve "agglomeration economies" and in rural areas by increased agricultural productivity, it said.

India's water management will need to provide for shifting water allocation to higher-value uses and policies to increase the value of water use within sectors. In addition, 230 million people are not properly connected to the electricity grid while generation will need to be less carbon-intensive, the World Bank pointed out.

"More generally, India's rapidly growing economy needs investment in infrastructure, an estimated 8.8 percent of GDP or USD 343 billion a year until 2030," it said.

Second, sustained growth will also need to accelerate inclusion, especially to create more and better jobs. While an estimated 13 million people enter the working-age population each year in India, only three million new jobs are being generated on an annual basis, the financial institution said.

The World Bank said a particular challenge lies in India's declining female labour force participation, which at 27 percent is among the lowest in the world despite overcoming gender gaps in education.

With Inputs From PTI