Regested as a member on PDF exactly 4 years ago. I came to cherish the "Iron Brotherhood" with Pakistan people, and to troll Indian members who seemed to boast beyond India could deliver.
4 years later, I not long take side. Though I still troll those who boast, I have to say I respect what India has been trying to achieve and what it has accomplished, I despise those who would let their religious prejutice overtake their logic and common sense, worse, attack or even lecture those who have nothing but goodwill to them, by using the same Western propoganda that Chinese are so familiar with and tired of.
Honestly India is too far behind and needs lot of reforms, but there is general acceptance that this is the priority among critical mass of people (of all kinds...both movers and shakers but also general people).
This makes us more economy oriented ...whereas others focus only on sharpest spear military stuff and then scratch heads why their "body" behind it gets weaker and fragile as time goes on. In fact point blank, I got no answer a few times when I queried why per capita, military imports for these guys are much higher than us when the perception portrayed (past the actual numbers) is one of "large apex export" claim.
Literally I have seen here pages and pages of chest thumping over like a few 10's of million military "sales" to whichever other country....but complete ignorance on the issues that severely depress the sales of products that concern bread+butter 99% of the people livelihoods.
Like I see for example China export say 20 billion of that kind of (99%) stuff to some country, and India export like say 5 billion of that kind of stuff.....but the country with this military-apex-complex export in total less than a few 100 mil (total incl the military stuff)...even if the destination country is "strong religion-based ally" or whatever.
It befuddles and amuses me....and they seem to want to largely continue that trajectory too.
Anyway there is much to do on our end in our economy, and Chinese have charted a lot of relevant sectors. We want converted final production (with quality apex investment), and move up the MVA chain... its starting in some sectors, but lot more to do. I feel some deal will be worked out with 5G access to China and in return get a good access for Indian IT and Pharma sectors in other direction, and platform grows and expands from there. We are not trading and investing enough with each other still....but the direction and impetus and understanding is getting better now. Each decade will be better than the previous one for quite some time now.
The one fundamental problem for which there is a lot of contention in RCEP is about putting a trade threshold of a particular item, so that no country tries dumping their surplus for cheap and destroy the market competitiveness. Guess what? China isnt agreeing to it. Its really easy for big countries to flood the local market without such a cap. I dont see how they will solve it, so that it benefits if not everyone. at least most of the countries.
At some point India needs to stop being so coddled and protected. Its coming to nearly 20 years now since year 2000 when the first base was laid in from the 91 reforms era.
It is high time there is more competition and exposure in broad sectors of Indian economy....we will actually do lot better adapting in long run compared to say US....because we simply dont have the buffer like they do (or fake) with their federal reserve.
It is all about negotiating for access for our strengths in all the RCEP markets, and look at sum total improvement. Where countries have huge advantage w.r.t us, we have to at some point bite the bullet there, allow liquidity movements of note (that create investment flow pressure) and back work the investment through the MVA chain.
We already missed too many buses with this protectionist drama nonsense. We have a 2 trillion market cap now to use as inertia counterweight as needed....its high time India man's up economically to get somewhere rather than just keep using the same old arguments of the old India of the 90s/2000s.
