[jnaina]

China used an iron-fisted central authority to impose unity from above. China’s model created cohesion mostly through forced coercion and cultural flattening. “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend” provided, of course, that every flower grows in the approved direction and every school arrives at the correct answer.

On the other hand, India’s progress continues to be hobbled by deep-rooted social challenges, including religious extremism, caste-based inequality, utter breakdown of civic culture, social fragmentation, linguistic chauvinism and regional rivalries.

Forced order or complete chaos. Choose your pick.

[dartharva]

India never had that choice, because forced order in the magnitude of China is practically impossible for the country for a vast variety of reasons too many to list down. Suffice to say there can be no comparison between PRC's federal admin that holds absolute power over every inch of its territory, and India's that barely survives each year.

For India, the choice was either an endless cycle of balkanization, bloodshed and anarchy à la Sub-Saharan Africa with a mild possibility of some of the states eventually thriving economically, or an inherited weak but held-together nation-state with a bit more negotiating power in the world stage.

[newsicanuse]

Corruption, red-tapism and colonial-mindset had and still has more part to play than thr reasons you have stated.

[aabdi]

+1, all the things that were said about India are true about Malaysia, Singapore, and to various degrees within Vietnam and Thailand. Yet these countries are all richer than India.

It is still true today as Lky said 50ish years ago. The bureaucracy of India is federalized yet overly centralized.

When the city governor must ask for permission to their own money from the federal when yet they are so far away, there is nothing efficient. The powers are yet so powerful yet blind at the same time.