Is China productive? Is India productive? (Article 1)

Article 1

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.” ~ Franz Kafka

We Indians hate China!

For what? For their aggression, for their ruthlessness, for their muscle power, for their Pakistan support, for the recent happening in Ladakh, for their approach over Covid 19, for their way of creating wealth, for their dominance over other neighbouring countries, for their speed of action, for their spread of business all over world, for their very existence in our house…. Right?

Well, but all is not new for India. It started happening from the 1962 war. Since then, China has been untiringly working to reach the position where they are today and doing what they want to do - without caring for anyone!

China has been among the world’s fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 9.5% through 2018, a pace described by the World Bank as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.” (Ref: EveryCRSReport.com)

So, we all should agree that there is much to learn from China than just hating them.

The India Story

The India story is not bad either. We too have been growing at good pace.

India became a 3.0 trillion economy in 2019 (IMF World Economic Outlook, Oct 2019).

After independence India took:

1) 60 years to reach 1.0 trillion mark,

2) 12 years to reach 2.0 trillion mark

3) Just 5 years to reach 3.0 trillion mark

4) Now India is aiming to reach 5.0 trillion mark by 2025

(Ref: Economic Times)

China cannot be ignored

As we grow, we will see lots of hurdles being put in our way by our strongest competitor – China. So it is important to know their strengths…

One of the most important strength of China is - One nation – One government – One language – Perfectly Swadeshi!

Let us go one by one.

One nation - According to the 2010 census, 91.51% of the China population was Han Chinese, and 8.49% were minorities. That is what I mean by one nation. No cast, No religion… That is what the communist regime believes in & the demographics support it. They have lesser problems than the Indian government in handling related issues.

One government - The communist party rules the country without any political resistance. The decisions are therefore implemented much faster & seamlessly. This saves a lot of money for the country, as they do not waste money in project delays, land acquisitions, court cases, public unrest & opposition parties fuelling the resistance. Whether it is good or bad is another question & I do not intend to support China here, but one must accept this fact as a major difference in the system that pulls India back from growing rapidly.

One language - China speaks Mandarin as their official language everywhere in the country. Period. No debates on protecting the local language, no hurdles in communicating between different regions in the country… Again, this can be debated, as being multilingual is helping India in many ways. Perhaps it is one of the reasons why Indians are good at English. For internal communications, India needs a common language & English fills that gap, thanks to the British rule! But thinking of a common ground level Chinese person, he/she does not have problem of communication within China.

Perfectly Swadeshi - Lastly, on being Swadeshi - China is perfectly Swadeshi for their own people. To the extent of having their own versions of Google and WhatsApp, which are being used by all Chinese people. If they are manufacturers of the world, why would they buy anything from other countries? During my days of international marketing, we were able to do business in several countries including even South Korea (people of countries like S. Korea & Japan too do not like to buy anything from foreign countries). But we were not able to SELL in China. You can only BUY from China!

India, as nation, needs to grow even more rapidly, as I feel. In the next article I’ll put some thoughts on our productivity & how can MSME sector make India win in this game.

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Do let me know your viewpoint about this article.

© Nitin Kirloskar