'India is like China was 15-20 years ago', but how? To better frame my views on two of the most important consumer markets, I turn to a Princeton Sociology postdoc and lecturer.
Hi Yangling, as an Indian I tend to agree with Kyle's understanding of India. I have also read a fair bit on China's history, economic transformation and have experienced that transformation ever since I moved to Shanghai last year. And as somebody who speaks Chinese, I feel I tend to understand the country and culture on a deeper level than would otherwise be possible.
On matters of infrastructure, I would emphasise, more than what Kyle did, on the substantial differences. I live in Shanghai, but I have also visited Beijing, Hangzhou and Chongqing. As an Indian, I do have to admit that the quality of infrastructure in those cities are far superior to that of any city in India. And the funny part is, I later learnt that Hangzhou and Chongqing are not even considered tier 1 cities in China. The infrastructure of Mumbai and Delhi, the two largest tier 1 cities of India, aren't close to what we find in China's tier 2 cities, let alone tier 1 cities.
In my view, this difference largely stems from two major differences - ease of land acquisition for large public infrastructure projects and governance & political structures. (I also think 户口 is another major point, but lets leave that for some other day).
Given that most of the land in India is privately owned it is very difficult to convince a whole neighbourhood to sell their land to the government so that it can build public infrastructure. Even if the government tries to more-than-fairly compensate those people, in many instances there has been opposition to such acquisition. Now you might wonder why would people not want more money for their land than its current valuation? It's kind of a no brainer. Right?
And this is where the second major difference - governance & political structures - becomes important. In India there are many political parties and civil society organisations and as Kyle emphasised regional politics is absolutely critical. Opposition parties, climate activists have a far greater role in India's policy-making. Sometimes, this is a good thing, but sometimes it makes the system incredibly inefficient, especially with regard to infrastructure building. I can find you umpteen number of examples where these stakeholders have mislead (or according to them rightly lead) the local landowners, a lot of whom are farmers, to oppose land acquisition despite a fair compensation. And if you can't acquire land quickly, you can't build infrastructure as fast as China did.
That's the gist of the problem, from my pov.
Finally, I personally also tell my Chinese friends here that India is about 25 years behind China with regards to infrastructure, in some places maybe many more years. I have also heard many mid-age Chinese people who have visited Delhi and Mumbai say that those cities today look like what they experienced Shanghai to be when they were 30 years old. I don't know if I am right, but I hope ultimately Indians will also experience this first class infrastructure like many Chinese do.
Hi Yangling, as an Indian I tend to agree with Kyle's understanding of India. I have also read a fair bit on China's history, economic transformation and have experienced that transformation ever since I moved to Shanghai last year. And as somebody who speaks Chinese, I feel I tend to understand the country and culture on a deeper level than would otherwise be possible.
On matters of infrastructure, I would emphasise, more than what Kyle did, on the substantial differences. I live in Shanghai, but I have also visited Beijing, Hangzhou and Chongqing. As an Indian, I do have to admit that the quality of infrastructure in those cities are far superior to that of any city in India. And the funny part is, I later learnt that Hangzhou and Chongqing are not even considered tier 1 cities in China. The infrastructure of Mumbai and Delhi, the two largest tier 1 cities of India, aren't close to what we find in China's tier 2 cities, let alone tier 1 cities.
In my view, this difference largely stems from two major differences - ease of land acquisition for large public infrastructure projects and governance & political structures. (I also think 户口 is another major point, but lets leave that for some other day).
Given that most of the land in India is privately owned it is very difficult to convince a whole neighbourhood to sell their land to the government so that it can build public infrastructure. Even if the government tries to more-than-fairly compensate those people, in many instances there has been opposition to such acquisition. Now you might wonder why would people not want more money for their land than its current valuation? It's kind of a no brainer. Right?
And this is where the second major difference - governance & political structures - becomes important. In India there are many political parties and civil society organisations and as Kyle emphasised regional politics is absolutely critical. Opposition parties, climate activists have a far greater role in India's policy-making. Sometimes, this is a good thing, but sometimes it makes the system incredibly inefficient, especially with regard to infrastructure building. I can find you umpteen number of examples where these stakeholders have mislead (or according to them rightly lead) the local landowners, a lot of whom are farmers, to oppose land acquisition despite a fair compensation. And if you can't acquire land quickly, you can't build infrastructure as fast as China did.
That's the gist of the problem, from my pov.
Finally, I personally also tell my Chinese friends here that India is about 25 years behind China with regards to infrastructure, in some places maybe many more years. I have also heard many mid-age Chinese people who have visited Delhi and Mumbai say that those cities today look like what they experienced Shanghai to be when they were 30 years old. I don't know if I am right, but I hope ultimately Indians will also experience this first class infrastructure like many Chinese do.
Thanks for sharing these great insights! Agree on many points, including infrastructure, land acquisition, the differences in political systems.