China’s ability to get things done has long caused many Indians to marvel. Whether the planners in Beijing are overseeing the biggest rural-urban migration in human history or building the world’s longest high-speed rail network faster than you can say “tickets please”, there is a sense of purpose to everything they do. India – democratic, federal, chaotic – has never been able to pull off anything like that speed of execution.
For years, Indians have hoped that their virtues will win out in the end. Their country may plod, goes the narrative, but it plods in the right direction. China’s authoritarian system, which operates without the constraints of electors, independent courts or a free press, can dash off in any direction. It is capable of engineering 10 per cent growth year after year (though even that miracle has recently run out of road). Equally, it can produce the disaster of the cultural revolution and may yet conjure an economic catastrophe – say an explosion of the property sector or an implosion of shadow banking. China has only a gas pedal.
But what if Indians voted to become more like China? That is one plausible interpretation of the seemingly decisive swing in electoral support towards Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s chief minister and a prime ministerial candidate with Chinese characteristics. If nothing else, Mr Modi, whose leadership style brooks little opposition, has a reputation for getting things done. His supporters, including most of the country’s business leaders, who have flocked to Gujarat to pay homage, praise his decisiveness and hatred of red tape. In 2008 Ratan Tata, whose plan to build the Nano mini-car in West Bengal fell foul of local politics, came to him with a proposal to switch the factory to Gujarat.