Chapter 25 2. Why is India lagging behind China?

Among all developing countries, India and China are most comparable: both countries are ancient civilizations, both have large populations, both have vast territories, and both have experienced colonial invasions. New China was established in 1949, and India became independent in 1947.Both countries later chose planned economy and economic system reform.In general, India's starting point 60 years ago was slightly higher than that of China, because China experienced continuous wars for a hundred years before 1949.India, on the other hand, was relatively stable. The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 was the largest conflict in the country's modern history, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of millions of people displaced.Issues such as race, religion, language, and ethnicity in India are more complicated than those in China. In the late 1940s, the two countries were relatively close in terms of per capita income (India was slightly higher), life expectancy, literacy and other key indicators of development levels.However, the two countries belong to completely different civilizations, and have chosen completely different political systems and development models. In the end, the results of the development of the two countries are also very different.

In general, China is far ahead of India in terms of national modernization.According to statistics released by the World Bank and other institutions in 2007, India's economic scale is only about one-third of China's, its foreign trade scale is only one-fourth of China's, its foreign investment scale is only one-tenth of China's, and its grain output is only one-third of China's. Only half of China (although India has more arable land than China), India's average life expectancy is 10 years less than China's, and the number of foreign tourists is less than one-twentieth of China's.The mileage of highways, the total number of Olympic medals, the status of women, the situation of slums, etc., the situation of the two countries is completely incomparable, and India is much worse than China.

According to a 2008 assessment by Transparency International, among more than 180 countries, India's corruption ranks 85th, higher than China's 72nd.According to the Green Index (EPI) released by Yale University in 2008, India ranked 120th, lower than China's 105th.The West always thinks that "democratic" India should surpass "undemocratic" China, and many Indian officials and scholars also believe it, thinking that as long as there is a "superior political system", India will do better than China. It lags behind China in most comparable fields, and the gap is still very large.

The road that India has traveled since its independence in 1947 can be roughly summarized as follows: in terms of politics, India has practiced a Western democratic system for most of the time since its independence; in terms of economy, from 1947 to 1990, India has practiced It is a planned economy controlled by bureaucrats and a policy that prioritizes fairness over efficiency, but India has never given up on the private economy, so India still has many time-honored private companies today, some of which have done very well.Overall, during this period of time, India's economic growth was slow, hovering at 3%-3.5% (which was ridiculed as the "Hindu growth rate"). As a result, social fairness and justice and other goals were not well achieved.

India began economic reforms in 1991, encouraging the development of private enterprises and vigorously attracting foreign capital.Since then, India's economic growth has been relatively rapid, maintaining a growth rate of close to 8% for more than ten consecutive years. It has made great progress in the fields of software, information, service outsourcing, and pharmaceuticals, and there are many things worth learning from China.However, these industries have not created many job opportunities, so Indian society has not been able to solve the widespread poverty problem. More than 300 million people in India still live in extreme poverty.

At that time, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not believe that a democratic system could be established in such a backward place as India, but today this system has basically stabilized in India. Many scholars in India said that if India did not have the current democratic system, the unity of the Indian country would not be possible. maintain.This system enables different ethnic groups, religions, regions, associations, etc. to have their voices heard politically, enabling them to express their own interests. In this sense, this is the success of the Indian political system.But this kind of success is incomplete. Its biggest weakness is that although the Indian political system allows all parties to express their own interests, it is unable to effectively integrate different interests, resulting in endless "partisan struggle" and political strife , unable to form a modernization-oriented strong government, unable to overcome the obstruction of various vested interest groups, and ultimately lead to difficulties in India's modernization.

On the following key issues related to the success of India's modernization, India's political system has not done much.In other words, I think it is the backwardness of India's political system that has led to India's overall lag behind China.Western mainstream scholars insist that India represents an advanced political system, which is contrary to common sense, and also contrary to the Chinese value of "seeking truth from facts". It is like the emperor's new clothes, and people without prejudice can see through it at a glance.What problems has the Indian political system created?

First, it was powerless to actually abolish the caste system.Hinduism believes in nature worship, animism and reincarnation.The caste system derived from Hinduism includes Brahmin (responsible for religious sacrifices), Kshatriya (responsible for national administration), Vaishya (engaged in industry, agriculture, business, etc.) and Sudra (people engaged in so-called dirty occupations) four In addition to castes, there are also the lowest-status "untouchables". These major castes can be further subdivided into thousands of sub-castes.Because the caste system is deeply rooted and ubiquitous in India, Indian society is still one of the most unfair societies in the world. People are divided into different classes from birth.

Although the Indian democratic system established in 1947 legally abolished the caste system, but at a deeper level, especially at the level of people's consciousness, belief and practical life, this system and its influence are still deeply rooted, seriously constraining Indian society modernization process.The caste system itself is part of Hindu teachings, and the Indian democratic system is unable to promote any substantive religious reform or social improvement, nor is it able to break through the obstruction and resistance of high caste people to such reforms.What's more, with the evolution of the democratic system with Indian characteristics, the trend of combining populist politics with the caste system has intensified, further deteriorating the quality of Indian democracy.

A basic difference between China and India is that although there are gaps between the rich and the poor as well as regional disparities in both countries, the vast majority of Chinese people believe that through their own honest struggle, they can improve their own destiny, but it is very difficult in India. Will not think about this issue.India has been independent for more than 60 years, but in many primary schools in rural India: high-caste children have small wooden benches to sit on, textbooks to read, and small slates to write on; low-caste children sit on the ground without textbooks or slates.Although the caste system has long been abolished by law in India, the principals, teachers and students in these schools are all Hindus. Everyone thinks it is natural to do so, and children of low castes themselves think it is reasonable to do so.In Hinduism, when untouchable believers go to temples to offer incense, they can only stay outside the Hindu temple and cannot enter the temple.

Modernization first requires eradicating poverty and achieving the minimum level of equal opportunity. However, India’s achievements in this area are far from those of China. One of the main reasons is that officials of higher castes are not enthusiastic about solving the suffering and discrimination faced by people of lower castes.People of higher castes, including a large number of government officials, never shake hands with people of lower castes, how can they be expected to work hard for the interests of lower castes.In rural areas, some subsidy tickets issued by the government to the poor will also be "intercepted" by people of other local castes, and people of lower castes generally dare not ask.People of lower castes often accept their own fate, thinking that their poverty is due to the lack of virtue accumulated by their ancestors, so they do not have the kind of enterprising consciousness needed for social progress. There are indeed many NGOs in India that are committed to abolishing the caste system. They do a lot of things, such as running their own schools and treating children of different castes equally. When there is a problem, their work can only be a drop in the bucket, to no avail.The Indian government has also done a lot to eliminate the caste system.For example, government departments and public schools reserve seats for people of lower castes. When applying for positions in government agencies and schools, you must fill in your caste, because you may be taken care of because of this.But in practice none of these measures can change the fact that the caste system is ubiquitous.You can ask 10 Indians if it is possible to eliminate this ugly system in the next 30 years, and 9 will tell you "it can't be done".Such a large group of untouchables has not been truly liberated, how can India achieve modernization? Secondly, since India's political system is unable to promote the elimination of the caste system, it is naturally also unable to promote the real liberation of women and the real realization of equality between men and women.India has been independent for more than 60 years, but India is still basically a patriarchal society, and the status of women is far lower than that of men.If you visit India from China, you will find that there are far fewer jobs for women than in China. Although there are a certain proportion of women in the white-collar class in big cities, in most hotels, restaurants, shops, and banks, women staff The number of employees is much lower than that of male employees, and female entrepreneurs and businesswomen are even rarer.The situation in rural areas is even more serious.The illiteracy rate of women is much higher than that of men, and the employment rate is much lower than that of men.In Indian tradition, women have to pay expensive dowry to their husbands when they get married. Although Gandhi advocated equality between men and women, India has never carried out a substantive women's liberation movement. Thousands of women are burned alive every year due to insufficient dowry.Arranged marriages and child marriages still exist today.The low status of women has seriously hindered the display of Indian women's wisdom and abilities.Although there are heavyweight figures such as Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi in the Indian political arena, just like Mrs. Bhutto in Pakistan, this does not mean that women in these countries have a high status, but it just shows that the quality of democracy in these countries is problematic : Ordinary people still have a kind of blind worship for the spouse or descendants of celebrities, and the democratic system in South Asia is still largely a kind of family politics. Third, it was also incapable of promoting real land reform.India’s founding Prime Minister Nehru himself once hoped to promote land reform, but the Congress Party he relied on represented the high-caste landowners who controlled India’s land resources. In the end, Helu could only compromise and hand over the issue of land reform to the state-level government and parliament, and the state parliament has always been the purse of the big landlord class.A large proportion of parliamentarians at all levels in India are representatives of landowners, and the situation in South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Nepal is similar, which makes it difficult for any real land reform program to be passed in parliament.In addition, the legal system left by the British to India includes laws such as the inviolability of private property, which also makes it more difficult to carry out land reform. Because of this, India has a large number of landless farmers, accounting for more than half of India's rural population.India has also carried out some limited land reforms. For example, the government distributed unowned land to some farmers, but the farmers who got the land often had too many family members and the land area allocated was too small to carry out large-scale operations. The land was sold.According to Indian customs, the land is passed on to sons or brothers, and men tend to go to the city to find higher-paying jobs. Women who stay in the countryside are often unable to farm, and eventually sell the land, and the money from the sale is used to prepare The dowry for marriage is also an important reason why Indian farmers lose their land.Developing countries cannot mobilize farmers' enthusiasm for production without solving the land reform problem.When you visit India, you only need to take a casual look at the local farmland and crops, and you will know that the level of field management and water conservancy construction in India is much lower than that in China, and it is not surprising that India’s grain output is only half of China’s. Fourth, it cannot solve the problem of corruption.Western political theory generally believes that corruption can be effectively curbed by Western democratic systems, but corruption is still very serious in developing countries that implement Western systems. India is an example.One of my Indian students said to me: "Dealing with Indian government departments is a lot like going to a Hindu temple to worship gods. You have to learn to make a whole set of the most complicated movements in the world, knowing when to kneel, when to get down, when to lie down, when to You have to read scriptures. To apply for a passport to go abroad, you have to go through more than a dozen people and wait in line for several days. In the end, everyone tries to spend money to buy relationships. These are all open secrets.” Why does India adopt a multi-party competition system, but corruption continues unabated?The reason is simple: in a country with a backward economy, culture and education, it is common for politicians to use money to buy tickets directly or indirectly (such as buying gangsters and then controlling the source of tickets).The underworld in the slums of Mumbai can call the wind and rain, making the slums a stable base for a large number of corrupt politicians.The underworld also colludes with politicians and engages in drug trafficking, which not only bribes many government officials and NGOs, but also controls votes.The bribery situation of Indian parliamentarians is also very serious. On December 12, 2005, India's "Today Broadcasting" TV station broadcast a group of candid pictures, recording 11 Indian parliamentarians and journalists posing as representatives of lobbying companies conducting "cash for questions" transactions In the picture, some congressmen are putting rolls of money directly into their pockets, while others count the money first, and then fully agree to the request of the representatives of the "lobbying company". In the Indian Parliament elected in 2004, nearly a quarter of the elected members had criminal records, including rape, homicide and arson. Some candidates were still serving sentences in prison when they were elected.The International Herald Tribune of the United States reported on April 27, 2007, according to the statistics of India's "Social Watch" organization: 125 of India's 538 parliamentarians were charged with criminal offenses, and half of them would be sentenced for more than five years if they were sentenced.This is also related to the Indian judicial system. The Indian judicial system is extremely inefficient in handling cases, and it is a high-sounding "presumption of innocence". These suspects can continue to be active in the Indian political arena. The newspaper believes that this situation is incurable in the Indian political system. "cancer".