China is the world's biggest country and India is the world's biggest democracy. Each accounts for one-sixth of the world's people. Their fates matter.
India has finally overcome its abysmal Hindu rate of growth to record impressive economic gains over the past decade. But China's stunning growth in its gross domestic product has been sustained over a longer period, averaging 8 percent or more a year for more than two decades. One result: Using a common poverty line of a dollar a day at purchasing power parity, poverty in China (16 percent) is half of that in India (35 percent). Even with people-friendly indicators like literacy, life expectancy, and maternal and infant mortality, China fares much better than India.
Unlike China, India is a vibrant, chaotic and rambunctious democracy where governments are "hired and fired" by the people, as was demonstrated in four state elections recently. Is India's slower economic growth a price of democracy?