> a little behind China on the same trajectory

In my opinion, India is around 30 years behind China. This is unlikely to change for several reasons. However, the primary reason is that no Indian government ever had a manufacturing policy that comes close to China's. The service economy is strong but employs a tiny percentage of the population.

Most of Indian government spending is on welfare followed by endemic corruption. It leaves very little money for nation building.

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Scoundreller 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For whatever reason, India had quite a lead on pharma manufacturing and still runs carries its own pretty well

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shash 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thirty? Try more like 10, and that’s only for the advanced nodes. Everything else, we will have capacity coming online soon enough.

Design, the gap is nonexistent in terms of talent deployed (though we have some way to go to have homegrown product companies). Which puts us roughly where Europe is.

Also consider, a tiny percentage of the Indian population is a ridiculous number of people. Dwarfing pretty much any other country except China.

Your last point on welfare and corruption is also false; 35% of government spend is on interest payments (which is kind of normal for most countries?) and 30% is on infrastructure and other capex. Defence is 8% and central welfare schemes plus co-sponsored schemes with the states are only 26%. The point being, while corruption is definitely a problem, it doesn’t significantly come out of the central budget. And welfare is smaller than infrastructure spending even if it’s quite significant (and it better be, in a country like this).

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malshe 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If India is 10 years behind China, that would mean in 2036 India will be where China is today. What's the chance of that happening?

Only an estimated 6 million Indians work in IT and tech services where the money is. India's working age population is approximately 950 million. India had the golden opportunity to bring manufacturing to India when Western companies wanted to reduce their dependence on China. But it wasted it.

I don't know where you are getting that 30% spending on infrastructue.

	▲	newsclues 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed look at manufacturing and realize that it takes more than 10 years to change a culture.

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anukin 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The infrastructure spending is where and how the corruption happen. The cases of bridge collapses in bihar gujarat, the mp 90 degree bridge etc should be obvious cases of corruption.

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dnautics 4 hours ago | parent [-]

it's not like bridges don't collapse in china. There were two major ones last year.

	▲	malshe 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The point is to learn good practices from China.