India scores over China
Some say that China's political model is superior to the western liberal democratic one. No democratic minded person will agree. America and China are two giants that have fundamentally different political outlooks. America sees democratic governance as "an end in itself", while China sees its current model "as a means to achieving larger national ends".
India and China are two competitors which are striving for prosperity and eradication of poverty - using two very different models of governance. China's model today resembles not socialism with Chinese characteristics but an immense pyramid of state-corporate capitalism.
Today's China is not yesterday's Soviet Union. Its economy is intricately meshed in the world's economy. Its exports flood world markets like the Soviet Union's never did. Its three trillion dollars-plus stockpile of foreign exchange reserves makes it way more influential in real terms than the Soviet Union's huge but effectively idle pile of nuclear weapons ever could.
India's democratic model of governance, on the other hand, is far less impressive at first sight. It is messy, it is corrupt, its coalitional politics impels its political managers to be indecisive and its poverty is out there for the world to see.
Many from India's rapidly expanding and impatient middle class are frustrated with bureaucratic inefficiencies in the delivery of public goods and services. But if you look closely, Indian model reveals economic growth over the past decade at an average annual rate of around 7%. This is second only to China's among major economies. Democratic governance, however deficient, hasn't crippled that performance. Poverty remains agonisingly visible but the number of millions lifted above 'absolute poverty' in the past two decades is, again, second only to China's record. Democracy is a bit slow, but it works.
Citizens of India are irritated with the present governance. But they are lucky because they still have powers that the Chinese don't. They can, and do, throw out any ruling management through regular elections while freely airing frustrations through the media. They did it once again in recent state elections. They might fret that all they can do is replace a bunch of thieves with a gang of thugs. But the fact is their electoral power is extraordinary. It generates, on the whole, a decent degree of accountability in the system.
Free, fair and regular elections form the fundament of democracy. Nations that choose their rulers freely have more overall freedom and a higher quality of life than those that don't.
Nations fail when it is ruled by elite who uses his power to loot national wealth. An ideal government is the one which has come to power through electoral democracy, can protect individual rights, encourage investment and reward effort to allow prosperity to follow.
What we witness today is China's state-corporate model and the western liberal democratic one adopted by India. There is obviously a rivalry over governance models between the world's two largest nations. Ultimately, it is a contest over values and human rights and there India scores over China.
Some say that China's political model is superior to the western liberal democratic one. No democratic minded person will agree. America and China are two giants that have fundamentally different political outlooks. America sees democratic governance as "an end in itself", while China sees its current model "as a means to achieving larger national ends".
India and China are two competitors which are striving for prosperity and eradication of poverty - using two very different models of governance. China's model today resembles not socialism with Chinese characteristics but an immense pyramid of state-corporate capitalism.
Today's China is not yesterday's Soviet Union. Its economy is intricately meshed in the world's economy. Its exports flood world markets like the Soviet Union's never did. Its three trillion dollars-plus stockpile of foreign exchange reserves makes it way more influential in real terms than the Soviet Union's huge but effectively idle pile of nuclear weapons ever could.
India's democratic model of governance, on the other hand, is far less impressive at first sight. It is messy, it is corrupt, its coalitional politics impels its political managers to be indecisive and its poverty is out there for the world to see.
Many from India's rapidly expanding and impatient middle class are frustrated with bureaucratic inefficiencies in the delivery of public goods and services. But if you look closely, Indian model reveals economic growth over the past decade at an average annual rate of around 7%. This is second only to China's among major economies. Democratic governance, however deficient, hasn't crippled that performance. Poverty remains agonisingly visible but the number of millions lifted above 'absolute poverty' in the past two decades is, again, second only to China's record. Democracy is a bit slow, but it works.
Citizens of India are irritated with the present governance. But they are lucky because they still have powers that the Chinese don't. They can, and do, throw out any ruling management through regular elections while freely airing frustrations through the media. They did it once again in recent state elections. They might fret that all they can do is replace a bunch of thieves with a gang of thugs. But the fact is their electoral power is extraordinary. It generates, on the whole, a decent degree of accountability in the system.
Free, fair and regular elections form the fundament of democracy. Nations that choose their rulers freely have more overall freedom and a higher quality of life than those that don't.
Nations fail when it is ruled by elite who uses his power to loot national wealth. An ideal government is the one which has come to power through electoral democracy, can protect individual rights, encourage investment and reward effort to allow prosperity to follow.
What we witness today is China's state-corporate model and the western liberal democratic one adopted by India. There is obviously a rivalry over governance models between the world's two largest nations. Ultimately, it is a contest over values and human rights and there India scores over China.
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