This article is from 2008.
Can India ever catch up with China?
Can India ever catch up with China?
After reporting from India it has been a revelation to finally arrive in China, having peered metaphorically over the Himalaya at the big daddy of emerging Asian economies these last four years.
How can India compete with China?
I hope I can say this without offending the residents of the city where my three children were born and I had so much fun and friendship, but Beijing is a city on an entirely different level to New Delhi.
From the gleaming new airport terminal to the wide-open three-lane highways which sweep through a city of fantastical glass sky-scrapers and clean streets filled with modern shops and authentic restaurants of all kinds the contrast for someone arriving from New Delhi is actually pretty humbling.
It is perhaps unfair to compare Delhi directly with Beijing, since China's economic liberalisation began more than 20 years before India's, but it certainly puts into perspective how far India has to go.
A more legitimate question might be to ask how Delhi twenty years hence will compare to the Beijing of today, and it's at that point that the widespread belief among Indians that it is destined for âsuperpower' status start to look questionable at best.
How can India, with all its messy democratic politics, compete with China when it comes to regenerating its dirty and decrepit cities, of which New Delhi is a perfect example?
Indians frequently cite their democratic traditions as the ultimate reason why they will overtake China in the long-run, but to look at the limited achievements of the one-time reformer Manmohan Singh these past four years might lead you to the opposite conclusion.
I find it increasingly difficult to see how will India get the job done. In a democratic country, particularly one where the poor create the vote-banks of power, even getting started on the job of urban regeneration is difficult, just ask the town planners in Mumbai.
Whether it's building power stations look at Mumbai's travails this summer, with some industries only having power four days a week or roads, the main road connecting Delhi with its airport looks like it was made by a child compared to Beijing's superhighways, India comes up way short of China time and again.
I'm not glossing over China's often brutal attitudes to its citizens' rights when it comes to urban regeneration particularly for these Olympics but they are getting the job done, which in the end will materially improve lives.
The shocking figures from Unicef over child-mortality in India are yet another reminder of the extent to which a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy is failing to invest in the people who, in the long term, must be made healthy and productive if India really wants to compete with China.
India had 2.1m child deaths in 2006 more than any other country on earth and more than five times the number in China. Literacy statistics will tell you a similar story, as will those on nutrition and disease.
The scary thing for Indians is that, from my experience, their leaders and politicians have no real concept of how far behind China they are, content to believe all that guff about being a rising superpower, when in reality China is to India as a Ferrari is to a bullock cart.
I wish I could be more optimistic, but the upcoming election in India, with all its petty regionalism and messy deal-making hardly inspires anyone to believe that India is going to get the kind of focussed, galvanising government it so desperately needs.
Can India ever catch up with China?
Can India ever catch up with China?
After reporting from India it has been a revelation to finally arrive in China, having peered metaphorically over the Himalaya at the big daddy of emerging Asian economies these last four years.
How can India compete with China?
I hope I can say this without offending the residents of the city where my three children were born and I had so much fun and friendship, but Beijing is a city on an entirely different level to New Delhi.
From the gleaming new airport terminal to the wide-open three-lane highways which sweep through a city of fantastical glass sky-scrapers and clean streets filled with modern shops and authentic restaurants of all kinds the contrast for someone arriving from New Delhi is actually pretty humbling.
It is perhaps unfair to compare Delhi directly with Beijing, since China's economic liberalisation began more than 20 years before India's, but it certainly puts into perspective how far India has to go.
A more legitimate question might be to ask how Delhi twenty years hence will compare to the Beijing of today, and it's at that point that the widespread belief among Indians that it is destined for âsuperpower' status start to look questionable at best.
How can India, with all its messy democratic politics, compete with China when it comes to regenerating its dirty and decrepit cities, of which New Delhi is a perfect example?
Indians frequently cite their democratic traditions as the ultimate reason why they will overtake China in the long-run, but to look at the limited achievements of the one-time reformer Manmohan Singh these past four years might lead you to the opposite conclusion.
I find it increasingly difficult to see how will India get the job done. In a democratic country, particularly one where the poor create the vote-banks of power, even getting started on the job of urban regeneration is difficult, just ask the town planners in Mumbai.
Whether it's building power stations look at Mumbai's travails this summer, with some industries only having power four days a week or roads, the main road connecting Delhi with its airport looks like it was made by a child compared to Beijing's superhighways, India comes up way short of China time and again.
I'm not glossing over China's often brutal attitudes to its citizens' rights when it comes to urban regeneration particularly for these Olympics but they are getting the job done, which in the end will materially improve lives.
The shocking figures from Unicef over child-mortality in India are yet another reminder of the extent to which a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy is failing to invest in the people who, in the long term, must be made healthy and productive if India really wants to compete with China.
India had 2.1m child deaths in 2006 more than any other country on earth and more than five times the number in China. Literacy statistics will tell you a similar story, as will those on nutrition and disease.
The scary thing for Indians is that, from my experience, their leaders and politicians have no real concept of how far behind China they are, content to believe all that guff about being a rising superpower, when in reality China is to India as a Ferrari is to a bullock cart.
I wish I could be more optimistic, but the upcoming election in India, with all its petty regionalism and messy deal-making hardly inspires anyone to believe that India is going to get the kind of focussed, galvanising government it so desperately needs.
