Why India Struggles to Match China: A Story of Society, Not Resources

By Chetna Gill

India and China, two of the world's most populous nations, have long been compared as they navigate their paths toward economic superpower status. Both emerged from colonial shadows in the mid-20th century, yet their trajectories have diverged starkly. While China has transformed into the world's second-largest economy, India, despite its potential, continues to lag. The narrative often attributes China's edge to superior technology, infrastructure, or capital inflows, but these are symptoms rather than root causes. India's struggle to keep pace with China's economic rise stems not from a lack of resources but from deeper societal fissures—cultural conditioning that stifles initiative, a pervasive lack of discipline, a fragmented national identity riven by regional and linguistic divides, and misaligned societal priorities that favor short-term gains over long-term vision. These challenges, woven into the fabric of Indian society, create a complex web that hinders the nation’s ability to harness its undeniable potential—a web further complicated by ongoing debates over policies like the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and its three-language formula.
Cultural conditioning in India is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has fostered resilience and adaptability, which is evident in the global success of Indian professionals in fields like technology and medicine. This unique strength is something to be appreciated. On the other, it has entrenched a mindset that often prioritizes tradition over innovation and compliance over ambition. This is not a blanket rejection of progress—India's IT boom and startup ecosystem show flashes of brilliance—but a broader societal tendency to cling to hierarchical structures and rote learning rather than fostering critical thinking or risk-taking. Contrast this with China, where Confucian values of order and diligence have been repurposed under a communist framework to drive collective effort and innovation. In India, the reverence for authority, often rooted in caste dynamics or familial expectations, can stifle individual initiative. For instance, the education system, while producing millions of graduates annually, emphasizes memorization over problem-solving, leaving many ill-equipped for a dynamic global economy. The 2023 Annual Status of Education Report highlighted that only 45% of Indian 14-year-olds could perform basic arithmetic, a glaring gap compared to China's near-universal proficiency in foundational skills among its youth. This cultural inertia slows India's ability to build a workforce that can compete with China's disciplined, production-oriented labor pool.
Discipline—or the lack thereof—further compounds India's challenges. China's economic miracle owes much to its ability to mobilize resources and people ruthlessly, whether through state-driven infrastructure projects or factory-floor productivity. India, by contrast, struggles with a casual approach to time, accountability, and execution. The chaotic rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2017 exemplifies this. Intended as a transformative reform to unify India's tax structure, its implementation was marred by poor planning, inadequate business training, and widespread confusion, delaying its economic benefits. Meanwhile, China's high-speed rail network, spanning over 40,000 kilometers by 2024, was built with meticulous precision and speed, reflecting a national ethos of discipline. In India, public behavior often mirrors this laxity—traffic violations are rampant, deadlines are flexible, and civic responsibility is patchy. A 2023 study by the Centre for Science and Environment found that Delhi's air pollution, worsened by unchecked stubble burning and lax enforcement of regulations, costs the economy billions annually. Such indiscipline, from the individual to the institutional level, erodes India's capacity to execute large-scale projects with the efficiency that has propelled China forward.
Perhaps the most intractable barrier is India's fragmented national identity. China, despite its ethnic diversity, has cultivated a cohesive Han-dominated identity, reinforced by a centralized state and a single language, Mandarin, as a unifying force—even though this identity carries negative connotations. India's diversity—1.4 billion people, 22 official languages, and countless dialects—is a source of cultural richness but also a fault line. Regional loyalties often trump national unity, complicating policy implementation and economic coordination. While rooted in ideological divides, the 2019 protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act also exposed how regional sentiments in states like Assam and Tamil Nadu can derail national agendas. 
Linguistic diversity further fragments the workforce; a software engineer in Bengaluru may struggle to collaborate with a supplier in Gujarat due to language barriers, a non-issue in China's Mandarin-centric system. This disunity extends to politics, where coalition governments—such as the fractious alliances of the 1990s or even the BJP-led NDA today—prioritize regional appeasement, as seen during national budget announcements, over bold, unified economic strategies. China's authoritarian model, while not replicable or desirable in India's democratic context, allows it to sidestep such divisions, pushing through reforms like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with a singular focus. India's federal structure, while a democratic strength, often becomes an economic liability when states like West Bengal or Kerala resist central initiatives, stalling progress. However, despite these challenges, the potential of India's workforce is immense, giving hope for a brighter future.
Misaligned priorities within Indian society exacerbate these issues. While China has relentlessly pursued industrialization and export-led growth since the 1980s, India's focus has been inconsistent, oscillating between socialist-era protectionism and half-hearted liberalization. Societal values often elevate status—through government jobs or ostentatious weddings—over productivity or innovation. The obsession with securing a government position, seen as a ticket to stability rather than a call to serve, diverts talent from entrepreneurship or industry. In 2022, over 1.2 million candidates applied for just 35,000 railway jobs, many overqualified, underscoring this skewed aspiration. Meanwhile, China's private sector, backed by state incentives, has churned out global giants like Alibaba and Huawei. Indian society also grapples with a paradoxical disdain for manual labor, a legacy of caste attitudes, which hampers manufacturing growth. The 2021 Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme aimed to boost electronics manufacturing, but Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh factories report chronic labor shortages as young workers shun "lowly" factory jobs. China, by contrast, turned its rural masses into a manufacturing powerhouse, with no stigma attached to such work. India's elite, too, often prioritize personal enrichment over national development—witness the brain drain of talent to Silicon Valley or the stashing of wealth in offshore accounts, as revealed in the 2021 Pandora Papers—while China has reinvested its human and financial capital domestically.
Concrete examples illuminate these obstacles in action. Take infrastructure: India's Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, launched in 2017 with Japanese collaboration, remains mired in land acquisition disputes and bureaucratic delays, with completion pushed beyond 2028. China, in the same timeframe, built thousands of kilometers of high-speed rail, seamlessly integrating cities into its economic grid. Or consider cleanliness and public health: China's swift containment of COVID-19 in 2020 showcased its ability to enforce lockdowns and mobilize resources, while India's second wave in 2021 spiraled out of control, with hospitals overwhelmed and black markets for oxygen thriving due to poor planning and civic indiscipline. Even in technology, India's much-vaunted IT sector, while a $200 billion industry, remains a service provider to the West rather than a creator of original products, unlike China's innovation-driven tech ecosystem led by firms like ByteDance or Xiaomi.
This is not to suggest India lacks potential or achievements. Its democracy, vibrant civil society, and youthful demographic dividend offer advantages China cannot claim. Programs like Digital India and Make in India signal intent, and successes like the Mars Orbiter Mission on a shoestring budget showcase ingenuity. Yet these bright spots are dimmed by the societal undercurrents dragging India back. China's rise was not inevitable; it was engineered through an alignment of culture, discipline, identity, and priorities—elements India has yet to harmonize.
To close the gap, India must confront these deeper issues head-on. Cultural conditioning could be reshaped through education reforms that prioritize creativity and accountability over rote learning. Discipline might be instilled through stronger civic education and stricter enforcement of laws, from traffic rules to tax compliance. A unified national identity does not erase diversity; it could be forged through a shared economic vision, by promoting Hindi and English as link languages while respecting regional tongues. Priorities could shift by incentivizing entrepreneurship and manufacturing over bureaucratic sinecures and celebrating those who build rather than those who merely inherit. These are not quick fixes but generational shifts requiring political will and societal buy-in.
India's struggle to match China's economic rise is not a story of technological or financial inadequacy but of a nation at odds with itself. China turned its societal strengths into economic fuel; India has yet to do the same. Until it bridges these cultural, disciplinary, and identity divides and aligns its priorities with the demands of a competitive global economy, India risks remaining a land of promise rather than performance—a giant with feet of clay beside a rival that has already learned to run.

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