A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN INDIA AND CHINA WITHFOCUS ON THE ROAD TRANSPORT SECTOR.
ABSTRACT
This report aims to make a comparison of the Indian and Chinese Infrastructure in Transport Sector in terms of progress and reforms they have made to deal with their increasing demand requirements. The comparison of India was made with China, because, India when independent was much similar to China in terms of demographics and Infrastructure availability. Now India and China are home to almost two-fifths of the human population and are also two of the world’s fastest growing economies. The Transport scenario of both the countries has been studied and the differences are probed into briefly.
India and China have adopted different models of Infrastructure growth and both models have their own advantages and disadvantages. It has been widely debated that that India has a better experience of political management of conflict in a pluralistic society, on the other hand in the absence of democratic system, China may not be able to effectively deal with social unrest emanating essentially from growing inequalities and rising aspirations. Growing regional inequalities in China are seen as a major challenge on the other hand the regional differences in development profiles within India may be equally problematic. China in an “authoritarian” situation, regional imbalances may actually provide a labor cost advantage, with appropriate relocation for many more years to come. Similar possibilities in India are minimal due to very low level of human capital and the major challenge of political compulsions of multiparty federal along with large regional parties system.
There is no doubt that India scores over China in “soft infrastructure” while China is far ahead in “hard infrastructure”, despite a very large investments in the hard infrastructure in India in recent years. With regard to Foreign Direct Investment, there is less legal, procedural and