India's aspiration of a Viksit Bharat by 2047 rests on the productivity of its young population, and therefore on the strength of its higher education and research systems. This paper places India's tertiary education and R&D in an international comparative frame, benchmarking each indicator against the value expected at India's per capita GDP (PPP) through cross-country regressions, and measuring the gap from that benchmark for India and its comparators. India's tertiary gross enrolment ratio, at 33.1%, is close to its benchmark, and the adult share with a bachelor's degree, at 13.2%, marginally above it; the master's share falls short. Scale compensates for rates: with 105–108 million bachelor's degree holders, India's tertiary educated adult population is second only to China's. Employability of the credentialed has risen from 47.3% to 56.4% since 2019, but remains sharply stratified between professional institutions, universities and vocational institutes. R&D presents a mixed picture, with expenditure above the benchmark for India's income level, while researcher and technician density falls well below it. Keeping pace with projected per capita income growth requires a tertiary GER of 40.7% by 2030 and 61.7% by 2050, and a near tripling of researcher density.