> Your vision of India is a mirror house vision of a 50 year old India at best.
Well realistically, this is when my family left, but the article seems to cite the same pain points today.
Also, I think this comment exemplifies some of the issues with Indian society. The moment one levels a criticism, suddenly, the rather pointed criticism is taken as a criticism of society as a whole.
At no point did I criticise India's democracy or accuse it of authoritarianism. There are many centrally planned economies without authoritarianism. Nor is central planning associated with military juntas / coups. At no point did I say anything negative about India's growth story, which as you point out, is astronomical, but slower than China.
Overall, I think India's great. I'm just pointing out some issues that I see. It would behoove you, and Indians more generally, to listen to the criticism without getting confused over what's being criticised.
Also, the existence of centralized planning in a more concentrated form in China does not mean the centralized planning in India cannot be criticized. Again, we must stay tuned to exactly the criticisms I've outlined, not strawman.
> India, on the other hand has a highly federal system of government. Arguably the last few years have seen a lot more top down management but that’s a result of the party in federal government also being in power in most state governments.
The US, Australia, Canada, etc all have federal systems. This is hardly an excuse.
> And in terms of municipal actions the Indian state is addressing those issues to the point where there are many functions where the Indian equivalent are significantly faster than the U.S. Try getting a passport in the U.S. today vs India.
How long does an Indian passport take?
> India has also drastically improved government distributions. While the US government was sending literal checks through the mail over COVID Indian monetary benefits are now directly deposited in a bank account.
Again, however ahead India is of the US in terms of bank deposits, does not detract from the criticism that the Indian state and Indian culture as a whole is very into central bureaucracy. Actually, I think the check thing is yet another good example. Checks are an extremely distributed form of payment. Basically anyone can write a check on a piece of paper and banks will accept it (within reason). I can have anyone print my checks, and as long as my information is correct, the bank will cash it. Moreover, check fraud is taken very seriously, so that people aren't just doing this willy nilly. As a whole, the US is fairly high trust, so this distributed model works well, and has certain advantages, such as being able to cash checks anywhere, the ability to easily transfer a check to another payee (just write a new endorsement), etc. I'm not sure what Indian system you're referring to, but for me personally, I like being able to hand over money without having to give my life's information to private brokerages.