India number one in many things

 People can argue until the cows come home, but for them, predicting that India will be the next China or surpassing China is just a fantasy cooked up by fertile minds. Several decades further down the road may be a feasible fantasy, but then China could also not just remain stagnant and by then already the No. 1 economic power in the world with the BRICS global currency and settlement system well entrenched for the rest of the world to adopt, free from impending sanctions and subterfuge.

The Indians will think so that India is the next China, and you better not throw spanners against their castles in the air. The West will think so too, and they can flock to India to help. Hopefully they do not flee from India when facing the Indian system of predatory moves to take over their investments when they succeed against local Indian ventures. The list of who and who that got caught and clobbered in India are all top-notch investors from various countries, like Apple, Foxconn, Xiaomi, BYD, DJI and now Samsung and Netflix.

The Indian consumer market is too big to ignore for most companies and they still want to be part of the Indian upcoming miracle, despite the risks involved, hoping to harvest what they experienced by emulating their ventures in China. But, on hindsight, it will be a long bet, perhaps decades into the future for their dreams to be fulfilled. There are so many obstacles to overcome today for India.

Massive poverty eradication needs to be carried out first in order to produce the consumers capable of having the buying power like those in China today. This alone is a high mountain to climb, knowing that the mindset of Indians is strongly resistant to change or even criticism. Just look at the language issue in India alone, with no common language in place to promote national policies and advancing agendas. China just did the impossible by making Mandarin the common language adopted by all the 1.4 billion Chinese, with dialects still intact.

Infrastructure is also lacking in India notwithstanding the Indian Government trying to address this shortcoming. Without an adequate fast and efficient transport system, manufacturing is going to face obstacles getting supplies and moving finished goods out on time and according to schedule. But like the high-speed rail, taking all the time in the world to get it done is not a solution.

Skilled manpower for India to move into manufacturing is still in short supply and training periods are not just a matter of months. It takes years to reshape the education policies of India that had been catering to the service sector, and a game changer is really needed in order to turn out skilled engineers and STEM graduates in large numbers instead.

Above all, the Indian population is growing too fast for its economy to absorb the jobs needed to lift people out of poverty. Nothing will work by putting the cart before the horse. It may move backwards rather than forward.

Anonymous