The economy is powering on, but the Congress-led coalition is squandering an opportunity to improve India

India have got too much praise from its former master and other western friendlies.India is too proud to admit its own shortcomings.They have got the pride of an Americans because its democratic system and its Amazing IT sector which employs about 5million people.
At the end of the day, you can not just believe you are going to be better than China,simply because you are a democracy.

India's leadership is over-rated by the West. We have sycophantic and corrupt leaders who are holding our country back. A government of convenience dares not do anything much, and the Games are just the latest casualty. Indian people suffer tremendous filth and degradation but leaders like Manmohan Singh are busy placating the Congress President. Some superpower, this.

Here we go again...
The quality of Economist never stops to amaze me... firstly, i need to do a stop payment for my subscription

Dear men and women of the Economist, please try controlling this strong urge of converting a mediocore magazine into the International court of justice. Can you please write less opinionated articles and not just about India but Pakistan, China, US, etc. We need facts and not biased opinions from you.

Specifically on this jibe... Yes India does have issues in the political, bureacratic and even social systems ... but then who doesnt ?
But they are on a rising curve and most of the other countries being used for benchmarking are on a downward curve... with no immediate signs of reversing the trend.

The developed world propogated the India story... our dear analyst friends found this eldorado of a population to exploit and create a market and suddenly the west now needs protectionist policies to save its incompetent industries from the East (barring a few)

If you are a little farsighted, you would want to reconcile with India/China as a reality .... A decade back most thought of India as a land of snake charmers and in this decade they are debating on India's status in the global economy... would be happy to read your comments on India again in 2015/2020
In case your the abbreviation of PIGS doesnt start adding up to Icelandic proportions... or your personal finances become as good as the Her Majesty... has she filed for bankruptcy yet? :)

This is a flawed article.

A better analysis can be found at Morgan Stanley, which in late August published a lengthy report on how the Indian government has made reforms. (This link, http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1020385.shtml, at FinFacts Ireland, quotes many of the statistics.)

If you click on the link, you'll find quite a few contradictions to what's quoted in this article, specifically about education reform and spending on infrastructure.

I think this Economist article is not doing justice to India’s performance. It seems to make too much a big deal of Commonwealth Game out of proportion. The article’s headline is more sensational than substance.

India has managed an outstanding 8.8% growth in the second quarter of 2010. This can not be a single dimensional accomplishment for a nation this big with this many population and despite all difficulties reported.

Mr. Singh is indeed an able manager, there is no reason why he couldn’t have performed even better if Economist’s “Mrs Gandhi controls the government” was not true.

And the preparation of Commonwealth Games should not be used to gauge India government’s performance which is far more comprehensive and all encompassing in dimension than the preparation of a single Game. After all, India is not China, if it’s not cricket, may be it’s not much of a sport in India.

But India should pay more attention to eradicate the Hindu caste practice in real lives.

The article is about India.

China is not even mentioned in the article, so I don't see why many apparently believe it has to be mentioned in the comment section.

Very shallow piece --- devoid of data, ignorant about the past set of reforms, unable to explain high growth and investment rates, lacking in coherent argument and reason.

And it is published in a magazine called "The Economist" !

There are a number of deficiencies to be overcome in the policy regime. But it requires sensible analysis and sensible writing. Not this piece of triviality.

Manmohan has been a socialist for too long.
Part of the reason is the horrendous labour laws in India.
No-one is allowed to sack workers - and if you look at the report in this magazine this is probably stopping a lot of manufacturing.

Infrastructure spending is being held up , because the damned beaucrats, and state governments and their corruption and politics.

Bring back the BJP

Don’t mean to offend any Indian friend, but after seeing the failure of democracy in India, I really lost confident in democracy, at least in the west defined democracy, it doesn’t work for many countries.

Corruptions and poverty still prevail in many so called democracy country, not only in India, but in many forced-became democracy Middle Eastern countries, even in America and other developed courtiers.so maybe it’s time to invent a better political system for the world.

To be honest a few things have been pushed through, like the nuclear deal and the civil nuclear liability bill which will allow much need privatization in the energy sector thus bringing market force related efficiency (one hopes)

Then there was the right to information act that was passed and the more recent act that safeguards the well being of whistle blowers.

As for the goods and services tax I have no doubt it will be passed not too far in the future.

I think people are dissapointed in India due to very high expectations from Mr Manmohan Singh. He is widely regarded as ultra honest and a great reformer. So when he couldn't bring about the sweeping changes people expected love turned to dislike amongst the electorate.

I like to call it "OBAMA SYNDROME" ;)

Anyway I like to think of this article as a veiled compliment, such bashing of incumbent governments was traditionally reserved for Major democracies like the USA, UK, Germany, Japan etc

India is not a superpower nor will it be for a while. However it is on a track overall if compared to developing countries as a whole, although we certainly wish it could go faster.

@toytony

You state that "At the end of the day, you can not just believe you are going to be better than China,simply because you are a democracy."

Certainly not, being a democracy doesn't guarantee anything, what matters is that India develops its democracy to the full extent. But if people (including political analysts) are determined to force India into competition with China then in that case....

Please refer to the other Economist article, "India vs China: Contest of the century" , AFAIK the century is only about 10 years old yet.

If a article critical of a single elected government is proof of a country failure then in that case given the economists record of publishing crtical articles, The USA, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and numerous others should have been declared as failed states a long time back.

On a related note here is a link to the failed states index.

http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&i...

India is doing surprisingly well.

I am personally not a big fan of this government but I doubt that would give India bashing rights to forum trolls (many of which I see have created identities on these forums just to bash India)

Most of the time this magazine has little praise for India and China. Sometimes even pitting these two against one another unnecessarily.

One event should not be used as the ultimate yardstick to measure a whole range of other things. An things evolve. At least India is not on the verge of bankruptcy like some nations in the wealthy Eurozone. The Indian Rupee was not under threat like the Euro Dollar or does it face a mass devaluation prospect. Apart from that India must have done something right to register an 8.8% growth. Even a lower growth rate of 6% is still something to be proud of in this distressed economy unless one considers the world is experiencing an economic boom now. Why must India always be the number one country in this and that when there are about 193 countries in this world. A top five position for any particular country is a very excellent result already as it still outperforms the other 188 countries or so.

In terms of corruption. This is a universal flaw that can only be eradicated if everyone co-operates. Usually a corrupted person will not put all the money in that person's native country's banks and as such that corrupted person will need foreign bank accounts to hold the money. Maybe the registered account name is also of foreign name. Thus corruption straddles two nations at least if not more. Unless the world is well co-ordinated, corruption cannot be eliminated. Corruption does not recognise race or ethnicity hence it takes all races and ethnicity to eradicate it.

Just like a lot of things about India, it is just not what it promised to be.

Article is bang on!

Prime Minister Singh is a decent and a capable person. Unfortunately,
he is not politically strong nor a good communicator. He lost the election only time he contested from Delhi constituency. Now he has been indireclty elected to the upper house. The success of the Congress party is owed to Mrs. Gandhi. All important decisions are made in consultation with Mrs. Gandhi. Only time the wheels moved to pass nuclear agreement with USA was partly due to bribing BJP MPs to vote for it. Democracy is a very lucrative business in India.
Although corruption is considered evil but things happen very quickly with a suitable bribe. It is a lubricant that keeps wheels of the economy turning fast. Although the gloss of growth fades somewhat considering the double digit inflation( loose monetary policy). That is one reason the consumer spending grew slightly during the second quarter.

Give some credits to the Singh. He is not any Run of the Mill politician from a small country, but one who is running a sub-continental size country with over 1 billion people. There will be some hiccups now and then but over time, things will get back to per normal.

3 spam messages in 13 comments!
This is ridiculous... Appealing to spammers to stop won't help, if they had brains they wouldn't spam anyways...
Perhaps The Economist could vet posts containing hyperlinks before posting them...

Having been there - Having seen that! : Mediocrity breeds Mediocrity on all fronts - and slackness: Government as well private enterprise - A daily battle to get them straight!-

Wow!! Economist does it again...it has degenerated to become a tabloid.About this peace...just a collection of opinions with a provocative time..without any hard facts and analysis.
Articles based on facts/numbers and analysis carry much more weight..maybe the economist no longer recruits capable people to do that.This will generate a lot of comments though....maybe that is the objective of such pieces which we see with increasing frequency on the Economist.

@FriendsofIndia

very well written speech. do you always give the same reply to anyone who point fingers at our weakness ? . author here has severely criticized some of our faults(modes of operations). Instead if show off about middle class , military and population , lets concentrate to improve on those points .
no one is perfect here and there is always a chance to improve

jai hind

The apprehensions are correct ;but in abstract form.India has other priorities to attend to than The Common wealth Games .Manmohan Singh is not a natural political leader;and everybody knows that.Rahul Gandhi Lacks focus of a future leader;But ,STILL ;there is hope beyond Congress Party and individual leaders;The awareness of new indian youth about the future and mass movements will bring in efficiency to public life.Because,in coming years The WISDOM of humanity will guide.Let's wait & let us hope for the best.
Thanks