Contra bhai, Indians have improved their economy even when baby machines were in overdrive.
So there must be other factors as well.
please share.
We did improve the economy - though that is not saying much. We did not even achieve 10% of the growth what we could have.India is an over-regulated country. We have more laws than anyone in South Asia(probably entire Asia) because of our socialist underpinning and populist form of governance. China does not - though this might seem counter-intuitive(because China is more nimble than India when it comes to change).
Pakistan and Bangladesh both fare much better than India in terms of regulation. India ranks at the extreme end of ease of doing business and far after both Pakistan and BD let alone China. And almost all of our laws are focused on manufacturing and made in the Nehruvian era.
So we made money where the Government could not intervene - IT. Completely private sector driven.
And this is where somehow all the emphasis on education(must, in socialist economies) paid off. We had a large and ready educated workforce.
What started off as simple voice component of BPO(call centers) and basic code export of y2k problem which gave most global companies exposure to India. To the credit of Indian industry, it used that as an opportunity and did not remain limited to pluck low end IT. They wanted more & soon graduated from voice to data to knowledge export today. Vanilla BPO business today accounts for just 2% of India's electronic exports. These companies have absorbed most of the educated labour coming out in India and given a decade of good growth.
However we still have massive population who is leaving farming and coming to cities and there are no jobs to be had for these people. This is where we missed the bus. No politician/party in India has had the guts to fight the labour unions and amend the labour laws and manufacturing laws so that it becomes competitive to China and Vietnam. And we have
very high unemployement amongst these people. For a while the construction boom in India absorbed them, but as that growth has slowed down, they are once again a burden on the society than an asset.
Congress Govt did nothing since the last 5-7 years. We have been running on zero governance and basically minimal Govt support on any issue.
Japan has come to our aid here - literally a saviour. They initially asked GoI to make some specific infrastructure so that their companies can shift from China to India.Over 10,000 Japanese companies in China are looking to relocate. Even if we get 10% of that, we would create
millions of jobs just by Japanese companies.
GoI could not get it done. As I said, they gave zero governance to India. Finally, Japan
forced the last GoI to make some new policies and initiatives like the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, entirely funded by Japan costing $100 billion. Even that is massively delayed courtesy of slow pace of work.
You can draw your conclusion of where we failed, and where we have succeeded.
However I will say this, it seems that after many years, we finally
have a Government.
Modi Govt has bluntly said that they recognize the problem and their prime focus on economy is on manufacturing. It also seems that the new Government is proactive, they have already indicated they are willing to do something about labour laws.
So there is hope that in the next 5 years, Modi will lay the groundwork for another decade of high growth -
this time powered by Manufacturing instead of Services like last time.