| This is a very orientalist view of India. Most states in India have a single party ruling, and it's fairly easy to understand who to be chummy with, and how to operate a JV. The issue is swing states have competing political poles internally, which slows down the ability to operate as you need to deal with 2x the overhead. Even in China and Vietnam you have a similar mentality, but the difference is it's all part of a single party. Furthermore, at least in VN's case, you have the exact same problems as India if not worse. The main difference is most factories in VN end up getting built in the Red River Delta region (Hanoi-Haiphong), so there is a strong network effect. Once you go to other cities in Vietnam (eg. Pleiku, Can Tho) you lack the kind of administration that has experience dealing with foreign investors and businesses, forcing you to have to make JVs. India is basically a country with 26 Vietnams - some of those states have fairly decent institutional capacity, others less so. |
I will say, it’s a lot more than 26 Vietnams in India though, since most decent sized Cities have their own nested level of Chaos going on that likes to ignore the larger state infrastructure and is highly resistant to outside intervention. At least in most areas I’ve seen.
And that is also ignoring the Muslim/hindu/jain/sikh/etc. friction going on within each area too. And the occasional random bombings, mob ‘interactions’, etc.
Money does talk though.
I’ll also say, I’ve never been called an orientalist before - that’s cool. I guess?