Indian elite：India is too far behind China to ever catch up?
Frank April 2 2017 in Waterloo, Canada
For great many years, West has been misjudging about India and China; they believe that democracy will make India to prosperity; one-party dictatorship will make China to collapse, but the facts have been developing far and far opposite the assertion.
It was just the populist kidnapped democracy in killing India.
Needless to
say anything else, just the superstition of viewing cattle as sacred and let
them filled the streets in casually running, casually urinating and defecating,
with badly influencing environmental hygiene and public transport.
Such a simple
ignorance cannot stop, is India a civilized human society?
In the
economic development, India is as slow as a Tortoise, but China is as fast as a
Hare. India is too far behind China to ever catch up?
Such view is
from the Book The
Amazing Race Between China's Hare and India's Tortoise.
The author is Indian
entreprenour Mr. Raghav Bahl who is founder and editor of Network18, India
s largest television news and business network which is home to CNN and CNBC in
the country and also publishes Forbes India. He has been instrumental in
crafting successful joint ventures with such media giants as NBC Universal,
Viacom, Time Warner and Forbes.
Bahl won the
prestigious Sanskriti Award for journalism in 1994, was hailed as a Global
Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum and selected by Ernst &
Young as Entrepreneur of the Year for Business Transformation in 2007.
The
Amazing Race Between China's Hare and India's Tortoise is his first
book.
Only truly
sober and rational man can make a proper reasoning to reach a pragmatic
judgment.
Please see how
mentally handicapped of the Indian legislator is: Shiv
Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad assaults Air India employee. It was that democracy
made a chance for such mentally handicapped to grab policymaking position to
form a government in hemiplegic.
The hope is
not in democracy, but in non-partisan dictatorship, the hope at let non-partisan
professional social elite as that of Mr. Raghav Bahl to form a national leadership.
About the Author: Raghav Bahl is founder and editor of Network18, India s largest television news and business network which is home to CNN and CNBC in the country and also publishes Forbes India. He has been instrumental in crafting successful joint ventures with such media giants as NBC Universal, Viacom, Time Warner and Forbes. Bahl won the prestigious Sanskriti Award for journalism in 1994, was hailed as a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum and selected by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year for Business Transformation in 2007. This is his first book. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition. https://www.amazon.com/Superpower-Amazing-Between-Chinas-Tortoise/dp/1591843960
Is India ready for superpower status or too far behind China to ever catch up?
In his career as one of India's leading journalists and entrepreneurs, Raghav Bahl has often faced this question, and many others, from bewildered visitors:
* Why are Indian regulations so weak and confusing?
* Why is your foreign investment policy so restrictive?
* How come your hotels are world class, but the roads leading to them are so potholed?
* Why don't you lower your voice when you make fun of your politicians?
* Why do you control the price of oil and cable TV?
Clearly there's a huge difference in how India and its arch-rival China work on the ground. China is spectacularly effective in building infrastructure and is now reinvesting almost half its GDP. Meanwhile, India is still a "promising" economy: more than half its GDP is consumed by its billion-plus people, yet India has some unique advantages: Half its population is under twenty-five, giving it a strong demographic edge; 350 million Indians understand English, making it the largest English-speaking country in the world; and it's the world's largest democracy.
In the race to superpower status, who is more likely to win: China's hare or India's tortoise? Bahl argues that the winner might not be determined by who is investing more and growing faster today but by something more intangible: who has superior innovative skills and more entrepreneurial savvy.
He notes that China and India were both quick to recover from the financial crisis, but China's rebound was accompanied by huge debt and deflation, with weak demand. India's turnaround was sturdier, with lower debt and modest inflation. So India's GDP grew twice as fast as China's for a few quarters-the first time that had happened in nearly three decades. And in contrast to China's Yuan, which is pummeled for being artificially undervalued, India's rupee largely floats against world currencies. In the end, it might come down to one deciding factor: can India fix its governance before China repairs its politics?
With insights into the two countries' histories, politics, economies and cultures, this is a well-written, fully documented, comprehensive account of the race to become the next global superpower. For anyone looking to understand China, India and the future of the world economy, this is the book to read.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bahl, founder and managing director of India's largest TV news network, compares the superpower prospects of India and China in this meticulously researched but unevenly written study. Contrasting their foreign and domestic policies, cultures, and geographies, Bahl measures their potential for economic growth. Though China doubles its economy every eight years and "spends billion every day to develop world class infrastructure," India has its own advantages: it is the world's largest democracy, 350 million of its people speak English, half its population is under 25, and it boasts a "robust judicial system." Furthermore, India impressed the world with its resilience to the global economic crisis, rebounding with modest inflation, while China experienced deflation and a huge debt. But Bahl warns that India's dithering government could obstruct its potential, lamenting its failure to improve India's crumbling infrastructure while China's "democratic dictatorship" could stymie growth by discouraging innovation. Though the book offers valuable insights into the motivations of the world's two most populous countries, it could have been more tightly edited to eliminate repetition, clichés, and some awkward--occasionally bombastic--phrasing ("India's macroeconomics was beginning to allure"). (Nov.) (c)
Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
While his book’s title is posed as a question, Bahl, who credits himself with helping to bring such American media brands as CNBC, CNN, MTV, and Forbes into India, is clearly arguing India’s case as a superpower counterpart to its “non-identical twin,” China. Bahl openly admires China’s white-hot pace of development and its seemingly unlimited financial reserves, but he points to India’s resilient democratic institutions, its relatively young population (median age: 25.3), and its fiscal prudence in resisting the economic forces that ultimately devastated so many of the world’s economies in September 2008. Bahl’s cheerleading for India can wear thin, and he does not address such mitigating issues as India’s conflict with Pakistan and the possible environmental damage of a more developed India. Still, his book will clear up a lot of misperceptions about the nature of his country’s socioeconomic path. --Alan Moores
Review
"A unique and gripping account of the evolving geopolitics and the role of India and China in a transformational shift."
-Anand Sharma, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Government of India
"Raghav Bahl's colorful, engaging book does his reader two invaluable services: It moves well beyond conventional wisdom to provide an insider's view of India's political complexities and reveals just how different China and India truly are."
-Ian Bremmer, president, Eurasia Group, and author of The End of the Free Market
"With great flair and a keen editor's eye, Raghav Bahl tackles the first great question of the twenty-first century-who will lose the race to become the world's next superpower?"
-David M. Smick, author of The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy
THE ARRIVAL of a new superpower changes everything in history.
In the late 19th century, it was Germany which challenged a world order where Britannia ruled the waves. Two world wars followed. In the early 21st, we have reached a similar juncture.
The United States still has the guns but its economic muscle is gone. What superpower will take its place?
Most commentators have put their money on China. In this book, Bahl considers whether to bet on India instead.
The result is a clever and illuminating comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of two emerging powers and their radically different strategies of growth.
Until the 2008 world financial crisis, India's potential was largely underrated. It got a "B+ grade", in Bahl's words: "A good guy to have around the household but you wouldn't bet on him".
Bahl becomes optimistic about China's prospects
The crash of Lehman Brothers changed all that. While the West ended up on life support, India barely sneezed. Sound banking and IT services gave it immunity and vigour. The world started to take a more generous view.
With his heavy mix of poker language and a Chinese hare who is always "on steroids", Bahl will not win a literary prize but then he does not need to.
An Indian media-mogul, he knows what he is talking about and puts matters squarely. Rather than simply replacing one Asian giant for another, he has done something more interesting. He gives us a health check of all the vital organs of China and India. India has a strong base of enterprising businessmen but is hampered by a "dysfunctional" state. Slow trains are the result.
Meanwhile the Chinese state just gets things done, putting super-fast, air-conditioned trains on the tracks. The Commonwealth Games is no match for the Beijing Olympics.
Bahl becomes optimistic about China's prospects. Democratic institutions, he concludes, are not half as crucial for growth as many liberals think.
One attractive feature of the book is that it resists a one-sizefits-all model. China, he argues, is investing on a scale that could defy the standard model, a bit like "putting extra fuel into a rocket".
Over time, pouring money into infrastructure might trickle down to ordinary consumers.
Perhaps this is a bit too optimistic. There is little sign that China is moving upstream producing high quality products.
Productivity remains low. Some experts even think its double-digit growth figures are an illusion.
China is also now one of the most unequal societies on earth.
One reason for the relative stability is that most people remember the misery and terror of the cultural revolution under Mao. Everything is better than that but what will happen once that painful memory recedes into the past and new generations of Chinese experience low wages, no health care and no pension while party bosses and speculators enrich themselves?
In 1962 India and China were at war. Thirty years later they signed a "no war pact". For now, relations are relatively peaceful, but, as the author notes, the love-hate relationship has a habit of swinging towards the hate side.
China looks down on India as soft and uncivilised.
Meanwhile, India has not formally recognised China's control of Tibet. China's huge thirst for materials and the ecological repercussions of the Himalayas' shrinking glacier that affect both countries create new flashpoints of potential conflict.
A century ago, the rise of Germany (not a full democracy either) set in train a catastrophe that changed the course of modern history: the First World War.
Whether China and India will both be able to manage growth without aggression is the big test today.
Anyone concerned about the new world order our children will inherit will find plenty to think about in this stimulating, accessible book.
Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Portfolio Penguin, ?20
