[Term prompt] Licence Raj

When it comes to comparative studies, India & China are often compared for many reasons since both have a huge population. To put their numbers into perspective, mere cities in China are larger than European countries. The Indian province of Uttar Pradesh has more people than Brazil. And their developments are often compared since with these qualities and roughly same time period of being independent. Yet it is arguably conclusive that China is the more modernized country out of the two. This subject naturally is very vast so I like to focus on 1 factor, parts of the political structure. The PRC and the one-party states makes for an obvious heavily centralized political entity where decision making is very top-down with strong executive to enact policies swiftly and with fewer restraints from its own populace with all the advantage and disadvantage this brings. This harsh centralized principle can found in its roots in Leninism which generally emphasizes heavy centralization. Counter-intuitively however, India's democracy is also very top-down heavy. The result is that while India is capable of launching rockets in space and designing computer chips. It also results in said designed computer chips to be manufactured in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan instead, poor hygiene infrastructure. Perhaps the most telling is that while India is able to reach every person for an election showing their master in logistics, they also rely on symbols for some voters as India is one of the few middle-income countries not having a 99% literate populace. The general trend is that Indian government is pressured to "show" advancement rather than making real improvement locally meaning rockets over functional sewers. The historical origin of the top-down approach of India can be traced back to colonial times when the Britain ruled India, the United Kingdom focused on educating the urban elites whilst showing little interest in developing the local area beyond economic extraction. The result is that after the Indian independence, there was a very educated elite on the top but a barely developed and often Medieval conditions in rural areas who were not even provided primary education. As such the Indian governments often had to make decisions strongly compelling to be top-down and by demographic background often favored further urban developments futhering solidifying the top-down approach. An infamous result of this is the so called 'Licence Raj' where Indian businesses had to obtain the appropiate licenses which were notoriously hard to obtain and strained the Indian governmental apparatuses since sometimes it required up to 80 agency approval before you could start a business. China in contrast under Deng Xiaoping empowered local governments with credible authority to handle their own relations with private businesses in special economic zones, at first limited to the Chinese coast before coming more widespread, this extends to foreign businesses as well. Ironically as a result Chinese local governments are far less restricted than Indian government, that in despite their respective ideology that defines them. The licencing Raj would come to an end in 1991 after India only had enough foreign currency to import for 3 weeks. After that, India's economy grows a lot to this day, but with the peculiarity of having missed out on the usual industrialization process as India started off with a strong service economy with an industrial backbone. Shorthand sources: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/089533002320951037 https://dokumen.pub/an-uncertain-glory-india-and-its-contradictions-course-booknbsped-9781400848775.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj