India to overtake China in 2020: Will this really happen?

As an Indian, its easy to vote Yes. But as of now there is no one to beat China. They might be doing things the wrong way but still they are growing very fast. 

We only consider GDP when we say India is growing, which is also below China. But we have to consider how their growth is happening. China's government believes in create a room for a shop and the shop will come as compared to India's belief of charging tax and bribes for the shop started, by chance. China is building infrastructure projects at atleast 20-30 times faster than India is and the effects of these efforts will show off in the coming years. 

Then we Indians have a much higher average money in our savings accounts. Which means less money in the economy, add to that we earn a lot less. This means economy growth to domestic market is kind of closed. The only other chance is in outsourced jobs for which we are already abusing our infrastructure and the chance of growth is less.

In terms of innovations. India is getting no where. For a country with this much educated population we file very little patents. We are still people who write code, maintain applications written in 1980's, do surface finishing, or other out sourced jobs which no one else wants to do. We have to pay thrice the money to get product made by us compared to the out sourced people. How is government checking that? How many new startups comes every year?

Sorry to dissapoint but we are getting no where with this mind set. We need to do a lot more or something really bad has to happen to China.

I wish these were true.

But, in reality this may not happen by 2020. In respect to 'manufacture', we are far behind. But we are also picking up in this section. Lot more things are to be done for India becoming a global manufacturing  Hub. Question is : how we may make our manufacturing more cost efficient ?

As we know, our political Managemt is different from that of China. They have their system of doing things far better than us. In WBengal, when Tata wished to establish an Auto-hub in Singur, some forces within this state blocked that. This may happen anywhere  in India.. !! Not possible in China.

There are so many other reasons too. But, a concerted effort may be taken to make India a super economic power in days to come. May be by 2040 0r 2050 ... or .. ?

I am not really with the writer thought but yes India has all the ability to surpaas China. But target is too short ...2020...naaaa...Yaa in one thing we can do that and that is population, but Business, finance, army, infrastructure, Employment and thousands of heads are there, where we need a significant grow...I think we can do that but we need more time.

Athough I would like to believe this will happen,  this is why it will not:

1. China is growing at more than 1% faster than India. They are improving infrastructure at an amazing pace and investing heavily in research, aquiring assets all over the world, reducing dependence on exports to the west, have a stable government, do not have maoists or other separatist movements, do not have security threats from within and outside. Why should they slow down ?

2. India has a dream team ruling at present. What is the guarantee that the subsequent governments shall be as good ? To be realistic, thay are likely to be worse. Also, India shall continue to be weighed down by all the problems China does not have plus corrupt politicians and bureaucracy.

Sadly our chaotic democracy will be no match for the authoritarian Chine Juggernaut. India needs to change radically to dream of overtaking China.

A reality check and it seems the chances are bleak. There are several reason for that and one of them is regionalism so much prevalent in our country. Unless the citizens do not shed their regionalistic views and start looking at the bigger picture of nationalism there will be lot of in-fighting on the name of regions, cast & religion. This will have negative effect on the economic growth of our country. Besides the in-fighting, we will always have to face the problems from unstable neighbours. Finally, I do not think China will be sitting ducks till 2020 to see India surpass them.

There is enogh potential. However, from the way many resourceful States like AP, Kerala and many others pulling the country back, God forbid, it is more likely that India will be taken over by China in another ten years. Unless some drastic change happens with the next generation politicians and political scenario in India, many may not readilysubcribe to such wishful thinking of India overtaking China.

May be it is the inherent perils of democracy. A political setup that envisages a country be ruled by a government of the all the people, by all the people and for all the people is more an utopian myth than a realizable reality. It is too ambitious to wish that India, a very young federal nation inheriting long embedded ethnic variations, diverse cultures, social structures, linguistic differences, and highly dominating regional beliefs and interests, to become such an utopian democratic nation too soon.

In practical terms, democracy means not a government by all but a government of the majority. Therefore, such governments are tend to become majority opinion biased and the interest of the minority would naturally be sidelined.

In India there are basically two types of majority vote banks; both having sets and subsets of the other.

i. Majority religion based. By sensitizing the malleable in the majority religion, the power mongers can easily polarize the majority religious community as a means to come to power; which though democratic in principle, but often cannot be a secular one. This can be the intention behind the proposal some politicians to make voting compulsory. 

ii. The majority of socially and economically weak that readily exists in a developing nation. To get their votes in order to come to power they are appeased by every party showing the carrots that never to be, and ensures they continued to remain poor.

iii. A concoction of a mixture of the above two as being experienced in most part of the country.

In the Indian context, about 50% of the total population only has voting rights, the remaining being below age and not yet brought in the eligible list due to various reasons. Of these, only about 50% cast their votes. Considering a vote split among three major contestants, parties that get between 9 to 11% of the total population get absolute majority and the party that can get 7 to 8 % of votes could become the largest single party. Therefore, 1% shift can tilt the scale either way. The sort of democracy that can be attained with this sort of arithmetic of people’s representation is anybody’s guess. This is one of the major perils of our type of democratic process.

Democracy is strangled when elected representatives, ignore the needs and aspirations of the people whom they represent. Democracy is strangled, when ‘Playing dirty Politics’ become the main business and theme of the government and political parties inside and outside the government. Democracy is strangled, when the political parties stoop down to use the communal feeling of one group against other to come to power and compelled to oppress other communities to appease them.

Cent percent voting,  as suggested by some politicians, is not going to usher in secular governance by itself. As far as there is imbalance in the cast/religion based population and groupism based on linguistic and other regional interests, every political party resort to unethical ways, means and tactics to woo them to win elections, the chance of any member of any minority community getting elected is remote.

However, it can perhaps erase smaller parties off the scene and with that there is chance to emerge more stable governments. With that things may also change. On which direction, a majority religion controlled governance like in our neighbor or a progressive nation the like of that Europe, Japan and few others. Anyhow, Chinese model is not an ideal one to emulate. 

I will be glad if in next ten years (2020), India- China can hv a foto finish in this race -(that is,if it is a race), lack of democracy an hamper China's growth in the longer run.. so there I hv hope for India, But India overtake China.. that's a bit far fetched! 

because here lot of power politics occur compare to china

Difficult!!

The only real area of relief here is that most of our states have reached or reaching near urban outlook. Betond that we cannot compete with China. If you look at China as a country, there are very few developed states in China and very few cities that are UBER URBAN. Now that is the difference. We are more into all round development as compared to China. China is very city centric and hence the focus of manufacturing is also limited to these developed cities only!!

Also, i cannot even remotely think if we can match the labor costs. They are far more cheaper in China and will remain so because of a deep communist policy!! Here the Rich become richer and poor become poorer!!

I AGREE WITH JYOTI CHINA IS FAR ADVANCE THAN INDIA IN MANY MANNERS SO IT WILL TAKE TIME TO OVERCOME CHINA..

I am too a pessimist here considering that China is way ahead to us viz a viz infrastructure, current GDP, per capita income, military might, international influence & many many other parameters.

There are also possibilities that due to boom in one or other sector we might achieve a higher GDP but the problem with our existing structure is that this wealth is limited to a only small fraction of the society.

In my opinion it will really take time for having an overall inclusive growth in terms of poverty removal, education, medical, food, water, employment etc basic & infrastructural issues.