Development Experience of India vs Neighbours

India, Pakistan and China began their independent development at about the same time, in the late 1940s for the subcontinent and in 1949 for China, and all three started with a planned, the state-dominated strategy. The similarity of the beginnings makes the difference in the outcomes a study in strategy, not in starting points.

• India: a mixed economy, the public sector and the private sector together, with the five year plans and a democratic polity throughout.
• Pakistan: a mixed economy with a bigger military in the politics, the private sector encouraged from the start and the public ownership comparatively small.
• China: a socialist economy after 1949, the land brought under the communes, the private ownership abolished and the state directing the whole activity.
• The comparative baseline: the three take up development at similar colonial levels, so each country's own choices, not its endowment, explain the later records.

The population is the denominator of the per capita income, and the three countries entered the comparison with very different demographic records. China ruled its population growth early and firmly; India and Pakistan grew their people faster and longer, and each carried a large agricultural workforce into the modern era.

• China: the population control begun in the 1960s and enforced through the one-child policy from 1979, bringing the birth rates down sharply and early.
• India: the population control begun in the 1950s but the decline in the growth slower, and the country still adding a large number of people each year.
• Pakistan: the population control taken up late, and the reduction in the birth rates slower still than the Indian record.
• The countries as the numbers: China's adult literacy and life expectancy, the human-development markers, led the region, with several of the markers converging among the three by the recent decades.

The three economies diverged where the work sits. In the reform years, India raised its services to the largest share of the income while the employment stayed heavier in the agriculture; China moved its production and its people rapidly to the industry; and Pakistan grew its industry and its agriculture through the medium path of the mixed economy.

• India: the turn toward the services and the information technology with the share of the agriculture in the income falling and its share in the employment staying large.
• China: the rapid rise of the industry as the employer and the producer, the manufacturing as the engine of the growth.
• Pakistan: the agriculture, the industry and the services by turns, the growth moderate and the agrarian base yet large.
• A common problem: all three continued to grow their incomes faster than their employment grew, so the working population outpaces the work in all three.

China reformed first and fastest. Its growth accelerated after the agricultural reforms of 1978 and the opening of 1982, and the strategy of the export-driven special economic zones turned it into the fastest-growing large economy. India and Pakistan began their reforms in 1988 and 1991, slower in the adoption, and the comparison closes on the different pace of the three.

• China's strategy: the commune system abandoned for the household plots, the special economic zones opened to the foreign capital, and the exports of the manufactures made the engine of the growth.
• India's strategy: the economic reforms of 1991 freeing the industry and the trade, with the services-led growth and the foreign investment arriving in the later decades.
• Pakistan's strategy: the reforms of 1988 liberalising the economy, and the growth that continued to depend on the agriculture and the remittances.
• The appraisal of the comparative records: China's growth has been the fastest of the three, followed by India and then Pakistan; the debate on the measure of well-being, the growth versus the human-development indicators, runs through the comparison.

The three countries also compare on how their people fare, the literacy, the life expectancy and the health of the populations, and the human-development markers tell a slightly different story from the growth rates.

• China: the highest adult literacy and the longer life expectancy of the three through most of the period.
• India: the literacy and the health indicators below the Chinese levels, though the gaps have narrowed across the decades.
• Pakistan: the human-development markers the lowest of the three on several measures.
• The direction of the debate: the growth was fastest in the state-directed China and slowest of the three in the democratic India, yet the human-development indicators converged among the three, leaving the question of whether the growth is its own reward or a means to the people's well-being.

The unit is examined through the comparison: the paths, the population, the sectors, the growth and the strategies, each element of the countries rendered side by side. The answers are tables of comparison in prose form, and the marks go to the parallel treatment.

• Compare the development strategies of India, Pakistan and China.
• Compare the growth and the population records of the three countries.
• Explain the sectoral distribution of the GDP of the three countries over the years.
• Explain the reforms of 1991 in India, and the strategies of China and Pakistan that preceded them.
• Comment on the greater growth of China compared with India and Pakistan.
• Show how the development experience of the three countries differs on the human-development indicators.