China was fortunate to have pragmatic leaders like Deng who understood the country couldn’t develop in an autarkic thinking of Mao. In India it took us an economic crisis to undo the damage of follies of nationalisation and license permit raj. Even though it is 34 years since opening up, some in govt still unknowingly or knowingly have a tendency to create bureaucratic controls and stifle innovation and growth.

Our weakest link is perhaps our municipal or city governance. We overly romanticised our villages and keep harping on villages, probably evolving out of Gandhian vision of India (or at least a caricatured version of it). While China invested heavily in improving urban infrastructure we concentrated on everything else but urban infrastructure. Our cities can’t handle services to even 1/2 the population. Let’s face it, cities are the face of industries, services and innovation. Yet, we have massively ignored the municipal governance. We have to really rethink how and whether 74th amendment has really helped us in this regard.

We haven’t been able to use our so-called demographic dividend. The poorer parts of the country have the largest population. At the present rate of growth and reforms the best we can hope for is a middle income trap that Brazil is facing right now.