Six Months, Twelve Domains, One Uncomfortable Conclusion

India’s institutional outcomes often reflect rational behavior inside flawed systems rather than individual failure. Incentives reward visible, short-term results over long-term capacity building, while interconnected weaknesses—low trust, slow courts, limited state capacity—reinforce each other. Yet successes like digital public infrastructure show that deliberate institutional design can produce world-class outcomes.

India Is Borrowing China’s Playbook

India is adopting China’s and governance strategies, from industrial policy to surveillance, but without the social foundations that enabled China’s outcomes. The result is a hybrid model: centralized power, growth ambitions, and rising inequality, raising questions about whether this convergence can deliver stability or sustainable development in the long term.