INDIA'S BEST COLLEGES, INSTITUTES and UNIVERSITIESEven horses that have been flogged to death by pundits can be resurrected if you express a point of view that is factual and yet startling. The India-China horse has been flogged many times to death. But new insights or a new way of presenting old and buried facts keep reviving this great debate of the 21st century. Put quite simply, academics, nationalists, strategists, CEOs, politicians, media professionals, think tanks and sundry others keep asking that one question: Can India ever match China? Recent news about China 'officially' overtaking Japan as the second largest economy in the world will once again convulse, confound and titillate all those who have a passion for comparing India with China.
Let us start with a fact that most Indians are either unaware of, or prefer to ignore since our sense of history is as strong as our performance at the Olympic Games. Professor Emeritus of London School of Economics Meghnad Desai has written a new book called The Rediscovery of India. Right at the beginning, this is how Desai tries to put the India-China comparison in perspective in his own words: ' India, unlike China, was never a unitary or even a single federal state through much of its history. In his fascinating one volume history of India, John Keay has a diagram showing how much of India's territory was controlled , over the last three millennia, by any ruling dynasty. The contrast with China is striking. For China, once you leave a turbulent period during 300-200 BC, there is a continuity in state formation. For India, the reverse is true. After the Maurya period of 400-300 BC, you have to fast forward (almost 2,000 years) to the Mughal rule which controlled a similar percentage of territory'India is at once a young polity and a very old culture.'
Says Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations and director of Centre on American Studies at Renmin University of China, 'China's current leaders and, through them, the majority of the Chinese people have a strong belief in Chineseness and its overwhelming importance to national reform and development. This belief in Chineseness is not like the traditional Confucian one, which treated it as a universally applicable value. It is more particular, not assuming that what is best for China is necessarily best for the world.' Can India ever match China ? Quite clearly, that will raise the hackles of ultra and pseudo nationalists who keep telling us that India was the defining and leading nation state of the world throughout much of history. But the fact is that China has always been bigger than India and will arguably remain bigger even in the future. A large number of analysts and pundits commit the cardinal sin of presuming that India was bigger or superior in some numerically measurable way than China. It never was. Once you acquire that perspective, it leads to much less hand wringing and self-flagellation about how China has raced ahead of India in the last three decades and how it is already an economic superpower even as Indians quibble and argue about the number of citizens still living below the poverty line.
In any case, it would be obscene to be obsessed with facile India-China comparisons when more than 600 million Indians earn less than $ 2 a day and when more than 500 million Indians cannot even write their own name in any language. It would be instructive for Indians who obsess with China to learn a few lessons from the trajectory taken by Pakistan as a nation state in the last 60 odd years. Ever since it became a nation state, Pakistan has defined itself against India and remains obsessed with it. And look where the obsession has taken and is still taking Pakistan. And yet, comparisons - facile or serious - have been the staple of academics, the media and even the world at large. You keep listening to, watching or reading endless debates whether Ricky Ponting is a better batsman than Sachin Tendulkar and whether Rafael Nadal will become a greater tennis player than Roger Federer.
Shorn of the hype, a comparison between India and China serves at least two key purposes. First, it helps us focus more effectively on what needs to be done to even match and catch up with China; forget about racing ahead of it. Second, it helps us seek and identify national strategies that will enable India to do what even now looks improbable, that is catch up with China. Most readers are familiar that China is ahead of India when it comes to economic, human development and military parameters. And yet, it is important to recount and highlight some of the more glaring ways in which China - which was always bigger than India anyway - today outstrips and outperforms India. Can India ever match China ? Both in terms of absolute and per capita GDP, China is today four times bigger and richer than India.
Despite an unthinkable decline of more than 10 per cent, thanks to the recession after the global financial meltdown, the value of exports from China to the United States was about $ 300 billion in 2009. This is almost double the total exports of India to all nations of the world.
China is sitting on more than $ 3,000 billion of foreign exchange reserves. That is 10 times the size of the foreign exchange reserve of India.
China is now the largest automobile market in the world with projected sales of 13 million automobiles in 2010. India remains content with automobile sales of less than 2 million.
China manufactures 10 tons of steel for every ton of steel manufactured by India. This should be a sobering thought for those gloating ever since L. N. Mittal took over Arcelor and Tata Steel acquired Corus!
The average Chinese farmer produces more than 4,500 tons of wheat for every hectare cultivated. The average Indian farmer manages to produce less than 2,500 tons despite the Green Revolution.
More than 95% of China is literate while India can boast of a figure of less than 65%.
China won 100 medals at the Beijing Olympics. Indians were ecstatic with joy when our athletes came back with three medals.
The military budget of India in 2009 was about $ 22 billion; that of China was close to $ 80 billion. Most analysts are convinced that the actual military and strategic budget of China is far more than that.
Indians are very proud of Bollywood and prouder of our democracy. There is a perception that the authoritarian regime of China denies citizens any freedom, including that to be entertained. Well, the total value of business generated by the entertainment industry in India in 2009 was less than $ 23 billion. The size of the entertainment industry in China was more than $ 175 billion in the same period! Can India ever match China ? Any which way you look, a comparison between China and India can be a depressing pastime for Indians. It is no consolation to be told by historians and academics that the difference between China and India was as stark and as glaring even during the 17th century when Imperialism started making serious inroads into Asia. The obvious question is: Why is this so? From a historical perspective, perhaps the fact that China has been a unitary nation state far longer than India makes it easier for the rulers of China to remain focussed on the big picture. It also helps that the ethnic group and language called Han accounts for almost 90% of the population of China while India is a bewildering cocktail of ethnic identities, religions, languages, castes and what not. Says Dani Rodrik, a professor of Political Economy at John F. Kennedy School of Governance, 'The Chinese and their administration are committed to a different idea of the social order and polity: Community-based rather than individualist, state-centric rather than liberal, controlling rather than democratic. China has more than two millennia of history as a diverse society from which to draw potency. It will not merely fold under Anglo-Saxon values and institutions. The best part is that a Chinese Global order will exhibit greater reverence for national sovereignty and more forbearance for national multiplicity. There will be larger room for trailing with various economic models.'
But most people who want to get a sense of what makes China so consistently outperform India are more interested in recent history and also a peep into the future rather than going back to the days of Marco Polo or Huein Tsang.
When you look at things from a more recent historical perspective, two key reasons for China's unquestionably superior performance emerge clearly. The first is the superior ability of the rulers of China to think long term and pursue strategic national interests cold bloodedly and ruthlessly. Amongst all major nation states, India displays a baffling lack of strategic clarity and long-term vision. The second is the superior ability of the Chinese state to deliver clearly defined results in pursuit of strategic national interests. The comparative performance of the Indian state has been abject and pathetic, to say the least. Can India ever match China ? Lets analyse the first reason more closely. China remerged as a nation state after a civil war in 1948 as a Marxist regime. But those who ruled China, starting with Mao Ze Dong, had a clear agenda and a long-term vision that would not be accurately defined as Marxist or Communist. They wanted the Middle Kingdom to re-emerge as the most formidable nation state and country of the world. After 1947, when India emerged as a nation state, our long-term vision was a more idealistic (many would say wooly-headed) desire to be a leading moral force in the world. Look at the last 60 odd years and you will realise that India's foreign policy and approach towards the world has gone through numerous contortions. First, America was a friend; then it became the bad Imperialist and Pakistan backer; now it is being embraced again as a strategic partner. Just one example will suffice to contrast India with China in this context. Even when the Shah of Iran of Iran ruled the nation as an American ally during the 1960s and 70s, China was consistently building bridges with Iran as it recognised the strategic importance of oil. China continues to do that even with the Islamic regime. India actually voted with America and her allies against Iran. It is still paying the price as China walks away with all lucrative oil, gas and construction contracts. Even today, ask the elite of India based in Delhi where and how they see India in the next 30 years and most will have no clue except a few clich's about India 'emerging as an economic powerhouse'. The Chinese are not infected with such strategic confusion.
This lack of strategic posture among the ruling elite of India is something that a majority of common Indians don't understand or would even bother to understand. But what they do understand very painfully is the performance of the Indian state vis a vis the Chinese state. There is no doubt that the Chinese state has spectacularly outperformed the Indian state in delivering 'concrete and measurable' results to its citizens. Says Bob Wheil, an acknowledged China expert working at the US-based China Study Group, 'Some Indians, especially in the upper and middle classes, look to the current policies in China with unrestrained capitalist development tide to a still fairly high degree of state control, as an example to be followed. What they in most cases forget however is that though the rapid Chinese rise in recent years results from many causes, it was the head start provided by the socialist revolution - in better health, education, infrastructure development, and social egalitarianism -that laid the basis for this advance. Lacking a similar revolutionary transformation, India lacked in most key economic and demographic indicators by the late 1970s. Many in the Indian working classes and amongst oppressed communities have not forgotten this lesson. For them, the Chinese model is not its current capitalist market system but the socialist revolution that preceded it under Mao's leadership. In India today, as well as in Nepal, The Philippines and elsewhere, Maoist revolutionaries are a growing force as they try to carry out the social transformation that was never done after 1947.' Can India ever match China ? Quite simply and very starkly, the only effective strategy that the rulers of India can adopt if it can ever match China is to deliver better education, healthcare, sanitation and infrastructure to the aam aadmi. And it is here that the growing failure of the state becomes even more glaring and dangerous. The terrible truth is that even desperately poor parents in Indian cities try very hard not to send their children to government schools. Even if they are tottering on the edges of the poverty line, Indians prefer to go to private clinics and hospitals for treatment. So all those who argue that India needs less state are plain wrong. The Indian state largely works to further enrich the already rich; it simply doesn't work for the poor and the marginalised. That is the reason why despite corruption in both countries being equally rampant, China has moved so far ahead of India in key human development indicators. The truth is: Indians have ended up getting the 'wrong' state.
The solution is simple and India has the unique ability to harness both its imminent demographic dividend and democracy to deliver the goods to citizens. Some years ago, this magazine argued in favour of a United States of India; a new political and administrative system that would replace the colonial legacy left behind by the British. Even Manmohan Singh, in his early days as Prime Minister in 2004, had singled out administrative and bureaucracy reforms as the most important ones in his agenda. The plain fact is that the Indian bureaucracy - used as it is to complete lack of accountability and transparency - will always sabotage and destroy any plan to reform the bureaucracy. This magazine had argued a few years ago that India could be better served if, like in the United States, judges, collectors, police chiefs and district magistrates were 'elected' by voters rather than 'appointed' by the state. That is a revolution that Indians are still awaiting. Till that happens, let us keep agonising over how China beats India and will keep beating India.
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