Cui Bono? A Tale of two countries

It is not uncommon for people to suggest that India should be more like China.

If you want to manufacture something, China can have a factory up and running in a few weeks. In India it would take you months or even years of wading through bureaucracy and maybe even some corruption before you got anything done. If you are an investor, China has the predictability and the output. India has a confused mess no one understands. China has the logistics, the technical know-how, beautiful cities. A giant machine capable of building whatever you desire at the lowest cost and the fastest pace. Boundless efficiency. India has cows on the street.

To an outsider, it's obvious which side is better. And it is obvious India should be more like China. But the reality is very different once you start looking on the inside.

Forgotten within the black box of China's efficiency are real people who work in factories 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. Many live right next to the factory. Escape is impossible. I have heard, although do not know for certain, that some places have nets outside the building to catch people who jump out. The people have no agency to do what benefits them.

Hence the title, "Cui Bono?". The Latin phrase for "Who Benefits?"

The Chinese government does what it thinks will benefit all of China. In India, 1.4 billion people do what they think benefits them personally. China is the government. India is the people.

And this is why India will always be a mess. Because the individuals in the country will not allow wide spread orchestration of the country in a way that compromises their own personal life. If you are a dairy farmer in a city it might be cost effective to let your cow just go around and find scraps of vegetation. If you try to inconvenience him by imposing some rules you will be voted out by his community. This is what the New York Times doesn't understand. They evaluate the country based on the rhetoric of politicians and not based on what life is actually like in India.

But that does not mean India will not grow and develop. It will just look very different from development elsewhere.

If you take photos of Indian cities from the past 20 years you won't be able to tell much of a difference. But what it doesn't show is how much the people have changed. They are wealthier than they ever were, they are more knowledgeable about the world than any time in history and they are insatiably ambitious. This doesn't show easily in pictures but the transformation is very real and you can't feel it unless you are actually in the country. The biggest debate in India right now is why we are not building the best LLMs in the world. What is the biggest debate in China? I guess we will never know because the Chinese government is now using AI to monitor each and every individual in Beijing. Big brother is watching.

India gives enormous agency to its people so they can decide the direction the country can go in. An individual in India can have enormous impact in the direction of the entire country simply by sharing his ideas. This can be seen in the rise of the influencers and YouTubers who have now substituted traditional news outlets and have become agents of thought for the entire nation.

And for a founder like me, India feels like the right place to be. You can build great software products at low cost and you have access to an enormous talent pool of engineers across the country. And of course because the country has so many different issues in so many dimensions, as a founder, you can take your pick. The future is limited only by your imagination.

I am not however downplaying India's problems. Not being organized makes it very hard to deal with complex problems like pollution. China solved it in a few years with systematic enforcement of rules. You can't do that in India even though it might be beneficial.

The point I am making is that India's problems are obvious but its virtues require some thought and actually experiencing life here.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the read. Currently I am working on Visual Book, a product that allows you to create illustrated presentations from your documents. I have also take on a couple of interns from my alma mater and so excited to see what comes next.