Superpower?

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Title: Superpower? The Amazing Race Between China’s Hare and India’s Tortoise

Author: Raghav Bahl

Publisher: Allen Lane 2010 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-670-08463-0

Pages: 220

Raghav Bahl is the founder editor of Network 18 and is a prominent presence in visual media. He was one of the first to reap the benefits of India’s liberalization process, reaping hefty rewards by making the television channel to the numero uno position in India. Bahl’s knowledge of business practices actually taking place in India and China are enormous and his cutting edge analysis of ground conditions make a very good effect on the reader. Without resorting to tedious statistics, but not letting out facts, he has presented a heady mix for the reader. The book is a comparison of the post-liberalization processes which spearheaded China and India to prominent positions in the world economy. China had a heady start of 13 years, its forward march kicking off in 1978 when Mao died and Deng Xiao Ping assumed power. India was still reeling under the semi-autocratic rule of Indira Gandhi when at last P V Narasimha Rao put India into the right tracks in 1991. The author associates China to the hare in the fable and India to the tortoise. In the story, it is the tortoise which wins the race in the end, but only because the hare slept if off in the middle. But the Chinese hare is unlikely to repeat the fabled blunder and in spite of the patriotic optimism of Bahl, we are forced to conclude that the outcome of this race is a foregone conclusion.

After it hit the paths of progress, the Chinese hare raced on, paying no heed to popular opinion or public outcry, which were ruthlessly crushed as evidenced in Tiananmen Square in 1989. India continued tied up with bad governance and left-centre politics infiltrating political parties of every hew. After Lehman crisis in 2008, both countries came out unscathed but India rebounded with lesser discomfort as it was not as fully integrated with the U.S. economy as China had. China employs all means in its arsenal, including unethical ones to reign supreme in world trade, the artificially low-valued renminbi being one such issue. China rules by law, in India rule of law prevails. Chinese law is an instrument of state policy, and courts often decide on patriotic or nationalistic fervour. Courts are also subservient to Communist party leadership, the operating procedures laughable by free-world standards. Hardly any case is brought against the state and litigators are often arm twisted to withdraw proceedings if it goes against the interests of the party. Even this iota of opposition is now stifled in the wake of colour revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, where elected governments were overthrown by popular revolts. China tightened the judicial process, even appointing a policeman as the chief justice of the country.

Geo-political ambitions of both countries differ. China plans immense spheres of influence in Asia and Africa often by encircling India with hostile regimes. India’s cozying up to U.S. in civil nuclear treaty unsettled China to no ends, prompting them to throw spanners into the works. In reality, China views India with contempt, as a soft power which can be made to fall in line. According to its view, India is too weak economically to exert an influence it tries to wield in the region. The communist nation eyes African markets with lust, huge as it is, which is roughly equivalent to India, with 150 million elite consumers and 500 million aspiring ones.

A curious dichotomy exists between the two neighbours in demographic profiles. Though the world’s most populous country still, China is rapidly growing old due to severe restrictions in the number of children a family is allowed to have. The harsh one-child policy ruling from mid-1970s is forcibly in place. The program was a resounding success because of the punitive measures meted out to deviants, even denying them food rations. By 2050, dependency ratio (ratio of people below 15 and above 60 years to other people) may exceed 70% clearly bringing out the graying of population. Family planning was slow to take root, and was put back several years by the harsh drive during emergency era (1975-77) when overzealous officials bowing before Sanjay Gandhi forcibly sterilized ordinary people. As a result, population continued to boom for two more decades and India may well turn out to be the job exchange of the world if it can manage to provide health and education for its aspiring youth. Entrepreneurship is more evident in India, which always had a private sector however fettered under the license-quota-permit raj. After liberalization, Indian companies developed worldwide brands, with no public secor company being incorporated after 1991. The situation is drastically different in China, with state owned enterprises (SOEs) trying to gobble up their weak private competitors in collusion with an obliging judiciary. Even though the trends in food habits are similar in both countries, the educational, transportation and scientific infrastructure is widely superior to India’s. India has the world’s largest English-speaking ethnic community, but China possess its largest English-learning community.

Building infrastructure is one activity in which China is not comparable, not only to India, but even to developed countries. It spends more than half of its GDP in infrastructure projects, many of them having overcapacity. The government plans to drive economic progress with the overcapacity. Land acquisition is a headache for India, while it is smooth sailing for China, as all land is government property. It is simply not chained by the proprieties of democracy. Railways, in which India had a head start of 25 years, has swiftly developed into new scales that China Rail is a model even to Japan. Indian railways was unaffected by the reforms process, which also contributes to the sorry state of affairs.

Despite the fact that the book started with a rhetorical question of who will win in the fictitious race between the hare and tortoise, Bahl reformulates the puzzle as who will lose the race. India needs new leadership, bolder governance and modern policies. It is advantage China on velocity and momentum of the forward progress, but India is the institutional favourite. The book leaves no doubt in the minds of readers that China is going to win the race unless it is suddenly afflicted with a soviet-style desire to forcefully control other nations based on ideology or culture.

The book is easy to read, with easily digestible facts and statistics. The language is smooth and free flowing. The scion of visual media has succeeded in putting the point convincingly across. Insightful analysis and criticism of the institutional failures of India should serve as a lesson for politicians, bureaucrats and civil activists, not leaving out the society as a whole. The equivocal attitude displayed by the union government in allowing 100% FDI in retail recently is a clear vindication of Bahl, who has stressed the same ambivalence as the root cause of snail-like progress in India. The author’s immense experience in running a fledgling news channel is obvious in the clever choice of words and ideas.

There are a few negatives also. The early to middle parts of the book unnecessarily eulogizes mediocre success stories of India, particularly when the author sings in praise of ISRO for its Chandrayaan project. An organization which still has not possessed the knowhow to launch a geo-stationary satellite should droop their heads in shame in front of the Chinese organization which has created wonders like sending a man to space in its own vehicle and bringing him back alive, is a long call for India to emulate. We feel that Bahl has fallen prey to the narrow ideals of patriotism in some portions of the work. An irritating aspect is the tendency to equate India to a degenerate America like India following those practices which America employ, but in a less substantial way. Drinking coke and wearing jeans is described as the only saving grace for an India struggling to be on the forefront of world business.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star