There are two reasons why China has been growing at a much faster clip in the period that you mention -

a. Economic liberalisation in China began around 1979. We started the process only in 1991. The benefits cannot be felt in a year or two. The process has to be sustained. In India, thanks to democracy, the liberalisation process was stopped mid-way in 1994 when the Congress began to realise they may not be coming back to power in the 1996 elections. There was a hiatus in the reforms process which lasted at least 5 years.
Had this not happened, the trickle-down benefits that policymakers pray for could have taken effect. Also, because of the very nature of the economy - it is more complex and mature with a sound legal and banking system in place - policymakers needed to take a cautious approach to reforms to protect the domestic industry.

b. The other reason the growth looks disparate is because India’s growth has happened in the services industry, and not in manufacturing. Manufacturing by its very nature gives you scale, something that the services sector doesn’t. What I mean by scale is that a Reliance Industries can grow from Rs 42k cr to Rs 75k cr in 2 years with a decent growth, but even at a 50% or thereabouts growth rate a TCS will grow Rs 1.5k cr to Rs 9k cr in 5 years.

For multinational corporations who are being forced to invest in emerging economies (vis-a-vis Europe or the US where growth rates are much lower), it is increasingly becoming a situation where it’s no longer a decision between China or India … it is now China AND India!

This is the present status of some of the initiatives of the present government.

Labour reforms; stalled

Disinvesment; stalled

The upgradation of Mumbai and Delhi airports; stalled.

The establishment of foreign universities to elevate higher education standards in India; stalled.

Manmohan Singh and his team, which includes the very distinguished Montek Singh Ahluwalia, are all hapless guys. I think they would share your concerns but they are completely pulverized from both ends.

At one end, are the eternal nay sayers, the communists, because there entire survival and success depends on continued Indian poverty and deprivation. At the other end, is the signora with her cabal of fourth grade, spineless and servile human beings. In such a scenario, Singh is doing the best he can, which is not much.

Regards.

First of all “scientific” is a very dirty word. It was first made famous by Mr. Marx. Only his theories, which eventually went on to kill 100 million on planet earth, was “scientific”. The rest were all unscientific bullshitting.

India was systematically made destitute by the practice of Socialism that killed all enterprise and creative skills of its people from 1947 to 1991. It is only in the past 15 years that we have taken some small steps towards restoration. Complete restoration, I think is stalled till 2009, by the very “scientific” communist gentlemen in power today.

The “scientific” data that you require is already there. Just compare the post-1991 and pre-1991 economic growth rate of India.

My question is clear. If everything we face today is nehru’s fault, then what scientific data you have to prove that we would have been better off with capitalism? You can take the result of capitalism from another country and try to argue it in the case of India. Taking into account the exact scenario in India after independence, you need to show with scientific data that we could have done better with capitalistic agenda. As long as it is not done, it is just a political rant and it doesn’t mean anything. You can get thousands from BJP and RSS to give the same rant. Also, you talk as if Nehru and his family ruled India through backdoor dictatorship. They were elected. It is the people who elected them on the basis of what they offered. If the result is disaster, then ridicule the people who elected Nehru family. What is the point in ridiculing them for India’s ills. If they had ruled the country through dictatorship, then blaming Nehru makes sense. In this case, it is just a political rant without any meaning. Indians should have thrown them out if they thought whatever they did is ruining India. Your rant doesn’t make sense in a democracy. Also without a clear cut argument to prove how capitalism would have performed for India, criticizing them for evils doesn’t make any sense.

Well, I don’t have a political agenda. My agenda is rather simple–to point out what is blatantly obvious. One can hardly call pointing out what is blatantly obvious as insightful. Yet, some Indians either refuse to acknowledge or are unable to figure out that the revered leaders of India have all been, to a first approximation, either incompetent or malicious, or both.

Why? Because India is so dismally and heartbreakingly poor. Did a comet strike India and destroy the promise of our prosperity? Did god decree that India have hundreds of millions of abjectly poor people? Are Indians as a collective incapable of creating a prosperous society? No to all those and many more questions that finally reduce the options to this: that policy chosen by India’s leaders were such that it impoverished India. Who chose the policy? Nehru set the agenda. Surely even you are capable of noting that. I never met the man. But I look on his works and despair. He was either incompetent or malicious or both. Charitably I just think he was totally incompetent.

I can argue that it was not Nehru’s fault; rather it was the fault of the Indian people. Well, in that case why then make a deity of Nehru and his entire family for 17 generations when he did not have what it takes to transform India?

I would leave Nehru out of the picture only if they stop labeling every institution, every park, every charitable trust, every road, port, university, stadium, whateveryoucanimagine with either Nehru’s name or his progeny. The more Indians idolize Nehru, the more I will point out that his policies were asinine and Indians suffer because of him. The louder they talk about how great Nehru is, how wonderful and committed a democrat his daughter Indira was, how absolutely amazingly great his grandchildren were, how astoundingly marvelous goddess his Italian-born grand-daughter-in-law is, the quicker I will point out how astoundingly stupid the man was.

If only they just said he was an ordinary man not particularly bright, a product of his times, lacked a real understanding of what was required, was a very poor executive, would have made a great speech-writer but should have left the business of policy making to smarter people — I would not have to get on his case. But the more they idolize him, the more it becomes necessary to deflate the man’s image.

Here is the bottom line: either he was in control from 1947 onwards or he wasn’t. If he was, he perpetrated the disaster; if he wasn’t then it is wrong to sing the glory of his and his entire brood. The most damning thing that one can do about Nehru, his legacy and his extended family is to look at the numbers that sum up India and then weep.