Stumbling Dragon, Charging Elephant?

To capitalise on China’s mistakes, we need to press home our advantages instead of getting distracted by a majoritarian social agenda

- Udayan Mukherjee

Over the past three decades, India has watched with envy as its powerful neighbour and bête noire China pulled further and further away on the economic front, leaving it to wistfully bemoan what could have been had it played its cards better. While the more jingoistic among us would spiritedly point out how we still had our democracy versus their oppressive autocracy, no one seriously believed there could be any comparison between how the two countries had fared relatively. China was simply way, way ahead.

And while it continues to be, the events of the past few months point to a potential unravelling of the Chinese success story, the portent of which has been received at home with an expected sense of schadenfreude.