Dear Commons Community,

Nicholas Kristof’s  column today in the NY Times comments on the progress China and India are making to modernize and reform their societies.  Kristoph has traveled extensively in both countries and sums ups that while “China’s autocrats are extraordinarily competent, in a way that India’s democrats are not”, he is impressed with the progress made in recent years in India more so than China.  His comparisons include:

• China’s economy has slowed at the same pace as the world economy while India’s economy has increased eight percent per year.
• China’s economy may be slowed by the aging of its population, while India’s younger population will lead to a “demographic dividend” in coming decades.
• India has managed religious and ethnic tensions pretty well, aside from the disgraceful anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat in 2002…. In China, by contrast, tensions with ethnic Tibetans and Uighurs are worsening.
• India’s independent news media and grass-roots civic organizations — sectors that barely exist in China — are becoming watchdogs against corruption and inefficiency.

He concludes that while India still lags far behind China, his “hunch is that the world’s largest democracy increasingly will become a source not of embarrassment but of pride”.

Tony