In a historic change, India is set to overtake China to become the world’s most populous country. But the question of whether India can realize its demographic dividend and overtake China economically does not go far enough. Much of the attention is due to a fundamental and strangely neglected issue: whether India’s government has the technological capability to transform the country into a major economic, scientific and technological power like China.
More than half a century since Mao Zedong’s disastrous Cultural Revolution, well-educated leaders have mapped out China’s trajectory for modernization. Mao devised hackneyed solutions to China’s challenge of rapid industrialization, such as making steel in the family’s backyard. But his comrades started reining in his ideological excesses while he was still alive. Since the pivotal tenure of Deng Xiaoping, China has been able to exploit its available intellectual potential, regardless of who is in power. In a forthcoming book, Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, argues that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is seen as more autocratic than his predecessors, has hired a panel of experts in IT, aerospace, 5G, robotics, and technology. Empowered the new generation. , AI and more. Many of these technocrats have experience competing globally in China’s state-owned enterprises.
Observers of India would struggle to find a comparable consolidation of talent at the highest levels of the country’s political and economic leadership. India’s civil service, unlike China’s, is a legacy of British rule. Originally to enforce law and order and collect revenue, it now implements welfare schemes and development schemes. Although increasingly diverse, this bureaucracy does not seem as well-equipped as China’s to deal with complex challenges.
It is hardly because there is a dearth of talent in India. A handful of educational institutions in India have produced arguably the most influential global intellectuals of any non-Western country. Indians today hold senior positions in western academic, financial and corporate institutions. Indeed, the Chinese diaspora in the West, though long established, cannot match the influence and visibility of the Indian diaspora. Yet, drawing a picture of India’s intellectual prowess and potential by looking at Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella would be misleading. In fact, they are a reminder of how much Indian talent exists (or is eager to go) outside India.
Sometimes homecoming is rarely successful. Take, for example, Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Invited to head the Reserve Bank of India by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2013, Rajan returned to the US in 2016. His criticism of crony capitalism and ideological extremism in India did not endear him to the regime led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Since Rajan’s departure, new appointments have compromised the independence of India’s central bank, with other key institutions, from financial regulatory bodies to universities and security and intelligence agencies, faring no better.
Facts and figures in India often seem increasingly bogus; Political exigencies seem to have blocked even a regular national census that sheds light on India’s population. Today, it is questionable whether a system of government that rests on power like Modi’s can help modernize India beyond a point, no matter how many infrastructure projects it inaugurates. Nor can this vital task be left to the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. China has powerfully demonstrated that nations making a late start on the task of economic modernization require long-term policy and coordinated action by a dedicated national elite consisting of bureaucrats and technocrats as well as political leaders.
Modi’s own educational credentials are not an issue. Nor is the Hindu nationalism of his Bharatiya Janata Party an obstacle in itself. Practical minded nationalists can learn by doing. But the regime displays elements of Mao-style, arbitrary decision-making, best illustrated by India’s disastrous policy of demonetisation. The ruling party also seems to have prioritized its Cultural Revolution against India’s previous, highly educated ruling class. After nine years in power, references are still made to the BJP being victimized by the secular elite. Those seen as bastions of social and educational privilege often come under fire.
Instead of catching up with China, India seems to be copying China’s past, when ideological fervor and the principle of the people destructively prioritized social stability, political cohesion and economic development. The world’s new largest country may need new leaders before it can realize its enormous intellectual as well as demographic dividend.©Bloomberg
Pankaj Mishra is a Bloomberg opinion columnist.
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