From the Economist's "Together at last," Jul 19th 2005

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/20/news/singh.php
With sluggish GDP growth rates that have recently averaged some ~4% and a record of economic growth starting in the early 90's, I'm a little pessimistic of a lot of the India 'new world power' and 'India rising rhetoric.' Does anyone think that India is a big player or a major player, economically? I'm just not feelin' it.

There are over a billion indians. I wouldn't underestimate the impact they make by sheer size.

If one American or other Westerner consumes and produces 100x more than your average Indian, their sheer weight doesn't amount to much, does it?

From what i learned about India, I doubt the sustainability of its economic growth. The fact is that India never lacks the conditions to develop but it never had a leader who created the environment for India to develop.

That only means there is a huge potential for growth. It's just a matter of time, really.

A huge potential that may never be tapped. India is not industrializing like traditional Western powers or like China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. She is advancing in high-tech services which can only employ a tiny fraction of the population. That is why I am not impressed. That's not real economic development.

India has its positives and negatives. On the plus side, it is a reasonably open parliamentary democracy, with less overt corruption and stronger rule of law ( than China ), and an extensive English-speaking educated class - all beneficial factors in attracting stable foreign investment. On the flipside, it has a long, long way to go in matching China's infrastructure development, it has serious social, ethnic, and religious divisions, and being a democracy India cannot organize and advance its modernization programs as ruthlessly ( and with as little regard for the economic losers amidst the citizenry ) as China is able to.

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Puritanism : the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy - H.L Mencken

You hit on it nicely in the latter part of your post. Their parliamentary demoracy is actually a weakness for them, since they are highly fragmented and cannot agree on making tough reforms. Also, the Indian government is extremely corrupt, more corrupt than even China!!!!

Bingo. However, I would disagree with you malcharactacterization of China's reforms as it is basically contradicting itself. How can China's reforms be simultaneously effective at increasing employment, and prospertiy and have little regard for the economic losers? If this were true, there would be no state owned enterprises left, but there still are.

I don't know enough about the relative level of corruption in the Indian system - but at least it is in part measurable, quantifiable corruption. With a more open media and political scene, such things are more easily exposed and corrected. India's democracy is simultaneously its greatest strength and greatest weakness. As for which country has the higher levels of corruption, difficult to say - in India there is a lot of overlap between corruption and "bureaucratic tradition", in China there is the fuzzy line between true graft and the "guanxi" games that everyone plays.

800 million Chinese peasants. Non-Han minorities. 20,000 dead coal miners each year. Hundreds of thousands of rural women driven into urban prostitution. Need I say more? Anyway, I'm not criticizing China's reforms from a purely pragmatic point of view - they've been quite effective, dramatically so in fact. I'm simply saying that their implementation has been utterly ruthless.

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Puritanism : the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy - H.L Mencken

Transparency International has India as more corrupt than China. How is India's corruption measureable????

I believe that in corrupt countries, corruption is a way of life. Ordinary people pay bribes as a matter of routine. I agree that democracy can help to end it, but one could also say that harsh punishments (i.e. Singapore, pre-Chinese takeover Hong Kong) could as well.

I'd say China has 50-60% peasants, for India the number must be 80-90%.

They benefit from affirmative action.

I would imagine that a far greater amount suffer from water poisoining, starvation and other health problems in India.

I'd be surprised if the number was not 5 times more in India.

Yes, those numbers for India.

I'm saying that to say something is pragmatic and ruthless is a contradiction in terms. The practical goal is to raise people out of poverty, so if you do that then how can you be ruthless at the same time? Ruthless at stamping out poverty???