Learn from China

State commitment to health and education, decentralisation of governance, and attracting foreign investment have been key to China’s spectacular success
 
Mohan Guruswamy Delhi

Almost inevitably the first question at you after a visit to China is, “Is it true?” It is indeed and the vast gap yawning between India and China spans most parameters. In the recent days there has been much euphoria about the rise of India as a world economic power and there has been some vocal speculation about India not only catching up with China, but also even overtaking it. Media hype and Davos hyperbole notwithstanding, India has a long way to go.  

The first impression while flying over China is how neat and geometrical the parcels of land are. In 1949, the state appropriated all land. Since then the land has been turned over to individual farmers to work, without giving them property rights, under a scheme of household responsibility. The size of each plot is viable unlike in India where it is a mere 1.4 ha, making it difficult to reach the target of four per cent. In the 1980s India’s agriculture grew at 3.1 per cent, as opposed to China’s at 5.9 per cent. In the 1990s this became 3.6 per cent and 2.7 per cent, respectively.

The size and efficiency of the Pudong International Airport, the drive into Pudong, the brand new twin to Shanghai left one marvelling at the quality of infrastructure. India today claims more road length than China, but 46 per cent of it is unpaved. In China over 90 per cent is paved and all road links between the major cities and industrial areas are super highways. Streets are clean and garbage tucked away neatly. Good maintenance is possible because responsibilities are clearly assigned and failure to live up to them is swiftly punished. There are very few multiple authorities and so there is little scope for buck passing.

But this does not explain why the Chinese are so far ahead of Indians. Very simply four things did it for them. The first and most important one is that by 1976 when Deng Xiaoping launched the reforms programme with the cryptic comment that “it’s glorious to be rich”, China had already accomplished very high indices in terms of health and education. Amartya Sen observed:  “China’s relative advantage over India is a product of its pre-reform (pre-1979) groundwork rather than its post-reform redirection.” As President APJ Abdul Kalam put it in a somewhat different context, how can India go ahead leaving Bihar behind?

The second big lesson from China is to decentralise government. These figures speak for themselves. In 1976 the central government accounted for 47 per cent of the entire state salary expenditure. By 2003 that became 28 per cent. By contrast in India that figure still hovers around 39 per cent. As a matter of fact public administration salaries are increasingly the burden of the local government in China. In India they account for only 12 per cent of all government salaries. The central and state governments manage to about equally share the rest. Today the wage burden of the state is an enormous Rs 189,000 crore amounting to almost 6.7 per cent of the GDP. What is as staggering is that such a small part of it is for the levels of government where the average citizen has the maximum interface. Local government has no say, let alone control, on essential everyday services such as education, healthcare, water supply, sewage and policing. If the teachers do not regularly show up in a primary school, the redress is in the district headquarters or even more far away state capital; ditto for the doctors and nurses who are supposed to man the public health centres.