China is India's Economic Role Model

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 02 September 2011, 15:46 IST
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China is India's Economic Role Model
Bangalore: India has a great passion to measure the country's economic growth against china's index, reported New York Times. At a recent discussion to celebrate the 20th anniversary of India's dismantling of its socialist economy, a minister from the ruling government said to the great business leaders to wait for their prizes as they India's economic development is drastic and is faster than china. P.Chidambaram the former finance minister disagreed with the statement and said "People are beginning to talk about outpacing China." Indians talks a lot about china, the neighboring country with which they have a quite bitter relationship. India had an 8 percent annual growth in recent years which was recorded as one the fastest economic growth in the world. Indians news papers and filled with articles and reports which contrast about the two nation's social and economic growth. Whereas the situation in china is totally different, they are least bothered about India's economy and pay too little attention. They want to compete with U.S. and European countries. There are no regular columns for an Indian economist in Chinese newspapers. India was once a world leader in information technology but also faces an imbalanced growth in economy. The rich is getting richer the poor is going poorer. "There are many backward and under developed places in India despite of a good economic and social development. We compare our country's economic development with U.S. or England as the Chinese development ladder is too strong and would only prefer to compete with developed nations in terms of economic and social development. We compare our country's economic development with U.S. or England as the Chinese development ladder is too strong and would only prefer to compete with developed nations" said Liu Yi, a clothing store owner in Beijing, Every virtual aspect of India is compared with China. The infrastructure, armed forces, education, software industry, proficiency in English language is what they mainly compare with china. By contrast, The Times of India, the country's largest circulation English-language newspaper, had 57 articles mentioning China - in July alone. The Chinese food is found in every roads of India, but Indian cuisine is hardly found in Beijing and shanghai. In 2009, more than 160,000 Indian tourists visited mainland China, according to the Chinese government. Barely 100,000 Chinese tourists made the reverse trek, according to India's government. Prakash Jagtap, who owns a small engineering firm in Pune, has been to China five times. Like many Indians, he loves Chinese food (of the Indian variant) and he sings the praises of Chinese diligence, persistence and discipline in its culture and government. "They have more discipline," he said. "Here in our country, people don't look for the long term. Instead, they look for short term, both the management and labor. We have to change our work culture." Jagtap's statement reflects a widely held view among Indians that China has outperformed their country in large part because the Chinese one-party system is more "disciplined" than India's vibrant, but messy, democracy. Many, like Chidambaram and The Economist magazine, have suggested that India could soon grow at a faster pace than China. Its economy, at $5.9 trillion, is about three and a half times as big as the Indian economy, but with a much older population than India. In China, however, India does not register as a threat, economically or otherwise. Pei, the economist, said Chinese officials, executives and even many intellectuals did not have a nuanced understanding of India. Communist conservatives maintain that "democracy is hindering India's development," he said. Meanwhile, Chinese liberals argue that democracy makes India more stable and its government more accountable - an impression that appears to ignore India's frequent electoral turmoil and deep-rooted corruption. But Indian fascination with China's economic success is also simplistic, Pei said. While one-party rule may have helped the country build infrastructure and factories in recent decades, it was also responsible for big failures under Mao Zedong. They include the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, when millions of people were killed, starved or persecuted. "In both countries, the level of knowledge about the other is relatively low," Pei said. But at least several people interviewed in China acknowledged an inherent competition between the countries, given their size and fast growth. Ideally, they said, it will be a healthy rivalry. "Competition exists between any two nations," said Hu Jun, a 40-year-old teacher in Shanghai. "That's a good thing. If we compete in the areas of high-tech and energy saving, I think that will benefit everyone." In India, Shrayank Gupta, a 21-yearold student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, echoed those sentiments: "There will definitely be a race, because we are both naturally competitive, and the world will depend on both of us."

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