China and India, home to a third of humanity, took divergent paths in building their future workforces. China banked on structured skill development, deep-tech investment, and a relentless push for merit-based advancement. It paid off. From dominating supply chains to leading in AI and engineering, China's rise is no accident — it's a blueprint.
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India, meanwhile, is still grappling with fragmented policies, bureaucratic red tape, and an education system more attuned to memorisation than innovation. The result? A widening gap, not just in development but in ambition. And now, voices within India are openly calling it out.
Akshat Shrivastava, CEO of The Wisdom Hatch Fund, didn’t mince words when he said India has lost the development race against China. In another post featuring a video on China's disruption of the luxury goods industry, Shrivastava added, “When you have the skills, the world comes to you. For the last 4 decades, the Chinese obsessed over improving their skills. The outcome is: they are cost competitive, control the supply chains (on several products). And offer great quality."
Shrivastava criticised India's focus on reservations over merit-based progress. “We Indians — on the other hand -- demanded more reservations. It has gotten to a point now: where you have freeloaders who score a big fat 0 on competitive exams. Yes, they become teachers. And teach others.”
“Classic case of the incompetent people teaching others how to be skilled,” he wrote. “End result: we lost the development race against the Chinese. We don't even talk about competing with China anymore. So, we go back to singing tunes how we are democratic country. And the Chinese are autocrats.”
India lacks discipline. You may go to any major Indian city; you will see chaos on the roads – “controlled chaos” as they call it. No accidents but not for the faint-hearted. Then it has meetings which follow IST (Indian Standard Time) – which means 30 minutes to 2 hours late from the scheduled time. Followed by more talk but little action. Everyone has a point, and no consensus is arrived at. If you want laissez-faire, then live with it and accept that you will never overtake China.
If you want to overtake China, you need discipline, courage to change, resourcefulness including funding, entrepreneurship and single-mindedness on a goal or purpose that is big to dream and small to actualise. Good luck India!
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