alt Hacker NewsIt's is heartening looking at a country like India and thinking that it only seems to be a little behind China on the same trajectory. The little flashes of news as they start settling in to more interesting and high tech industries. Whatever good or evil comes out of their growing geopolitical power at least that is another billion people with a clear enough path to wealth and prosperity.
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> a little behind China on the same trajectory
In my opinion, India is around 30 years behind China. This is unlikely to change for several reasons. However, the primary reason is that no Indian government ever had a manufacturing policy that comes close to China's. The service economy is strong but employs a tiny percentage of the population.
Most of Indian government spending is on welfare followed by endemic corruption. It leaves very little money for nation building.
> another billion people with a clear enough path
The opposite, all historical clear paths i.e. manufacturing/export led model is closed/closing (geopolitics + being automated away). Less clear service export also closing. The growth path that employs 100s of millions and 10s of millions are not available to Indian.
Reality is even PRC with most favorable conditions still left behind ~400m people because there's only so many opportunities. It's one thing to have ~1B who made it supporting ~400m who didn't vs India trending towards 1.7 B... and if they end up with 500m that makes it, and 1.2B that doesn't, then things may get very ugly in terms of governance. Now that 500m middle/upper class is large enough that India will in aggregate "make it" as geopolitical power, as in climb the tech tree, but due to sheer population and opportunities that looks now foreclosed, most of Indian's statistically, simply, won't. And when numerator/denominator of haves/have not too skewed, there's nothing haves can do (redistribute) even if they wanted to, which lbh, they won't. IMO this pretty much baked in dynamic for India for next few generations, unless we discover abundance.
Hope they can solve the whole littering problem somehow.
> It's is heartening looking at a country like India and thinking that it only seems to be a little behind China on the same trajectory.
Depends on what you mean by "a little behind". Reading Patrick McGee's "Apple in China" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_in_China) made me think otherwise.
with generations of parents forcing thier children to either be doctors or engineers, I would have expected India to lead the world in both of those categories.
> a little behind China on the same trajectory
I'm hoping for India development but that is quite far from the truth yet.
India's caste system ensures by design that wealth and prosperity will not be evenly distributed.
India is more than a little behind China. Which is depressing, considering that the two countries were equal in GDP per capita as recently as 1990: https://m.thewire.in/article/economy/from-1960-to-1990-india...