In the previous page, there was some discussion about China getting things done - building things or clearing things - allegedly because they're not a democracy and can do as they please. I'm sorry, but please don't parrot that here. It's been quoted unchanged on BRF for 2 decades and offers nothing useful, and what's more, it is wrong.
What makes China so good is that they've figured out how to align personal motives with larger policy motives. No entity can compel growth for 3 decades by threat of personal harm or violence otherwise. It can achieve some temporary gains like Stalinist USSR, but not a sustainable structure of multidecadal growth as PRC have.
What that have done extremely well at, is to carefully understand motives, and apply policies to accomplish it. Let's take mass surveillance. They have cameras everywhere. Well, they don't remotely have the money, manpower or time to run those cameras and keep an eye on 1.4 billion people. Many of those cameras don't work. What those cameras do is result in self policing. People don't know which cameras work and which do not. Police regularly use some of the cameras to apprehend people, and make a big show of its utility. It yields compliance.
A larger example is SEZs. They didn't open up all at once. They started just four - Shenzhen, Xiamen, Shantou, Zhuhai. They went through several iterations of reforms, understanding how economic activity built. Some of these four did better than others due to circumstances. Shenzhen of course became the crown jewel. But the most important thing is that they took time to learn carefully. Nobody, not even them, gets laws and policies correct on first try. But they are excellent at operating a feedback loop to learn and polish their policy and execution framework.
This is the reason they accomplish things - the ability to tailor solutions to their situation. Sure they use cynical means - outright IP theft, market protection, coercion where required... but these are not the primary reason for 40 years of economic growth. The stewardship of effective policymaking and execution, is.
This is the primary reason India has trouble managing growth . It is NOT 'democracy'. "We can't prevent people from overwhelming cities. Chinese have internal passport to restrict movement." they say. That is nonsense. Any modern developed country city has laws to permit overcrowding. You cannot build homes without proper zoning and permit requirements. One cannot have more than a certain number of people per household unless certain requirements for number of rooms, sqft-age and other requirements are met. Reasons like "It will tear apart people. It is heartless" , "What, do you want them to starve in villages ?" are just emotional noise. This is a matter of civilized law-abiding behavior - which ultimately is the foundation of high standard of living.
Zoning and permitting ensures that city administration can plan for delivery of PUs - water, electricity, sewerage, etc. It lets them estimate property tax income as well. Properly enforced tenement residence restrictions ensure that public services like police, hospitals and emergency services can cope , and are aware of how many people to deal with in a crisis. In a fire, the services know that 20 people aren't going to spill out of a crowded flat they're trying to douse.
None of these problems are due to 'democracy' . For most part, at local, state or even national level, our administrative apparatus is between fair and poor. In many places, it is between poor and deplorable. There are administrations at the center who show competence. This administration for example, in 5 years, solved decades long problems with access to public banking, rural sanitation, rural cooking fuel, rural roads, rural electricity access, and is now working on universal water access. Much credit to them. But it's a huge indictment of the system that this needed solving in 2014-2019, not 20-30 years ago. It's why I like them most. I care little for blue sky pronouncements - I value the ability to put head down and execute, even on a simple goal like rural toilet construction. Get. It. Done. If you do, you have my abiding respect.
The central government can do nothing to solve our major cities being incapable of implementing basic administrative capabilities. That is the reason the quality of life in India is poor. We have very unevolved adminstrative structures and weak institutions who lack the ability to clearly implement solutions in a well thought out and unemotional way. The best possible answer to this is STOP being emotional and superficial - the solutions lie in thinking carefully and implementing simple solutions
effectively.
Here's an example: unpermitted/unsanitary street hawkers. China, Singapore all had issues with this. China city police regularly has drives to evict hawkers. The goal is not to fix it in one go. It won't be fixed. It also serves no point to destroy their livelihoods. It will just create additional public policy problems associated with poverty, crime, and welfare. The goal is to enforce proper behavior through repeated action. Ensure a) they can hawk only in specific areas and b) ensure their sanitary standards are up to a level . Meanwhile ensure policing the police is possible by enabling citizens to report demands for bribery though pictures/videos sent over cellphones to an independent authority who can suspend an official. Do this repeatedly in high profile incidents that both sides remember. Self policed civilized behavior follows. At a larger scale, do the same for builders who don't follow permitting. A few high profile builders are to be regularly arrested for their transgressions, on suitable basis - their conduct involved inter state crime, so a national crime enforcement agency could override local police/state patronage. Do this on a regular basis in a high profile way.
Improving our standard of living takes more than GDP growth. We have had world beating growth for 30 years now - only China makes it look bad. But even after 25 years of growth, barely half the villages had electricity, sanitation or roads. It took specific, targeted execution to complete. Growth doesn't automatically yield rapid improvement in standard of living. It takes effective policymaking and administration. I place FAR more value on a government able to implement policy effectively, than one that makes grandiose statements.
That's the fundamental reason I like this central government; they have accomplished tasks - utterly BASIC tasks like build roads and electricity lines - that 70 years of prior governments could not marshall effort to do. The Soviet Union got electrification done in the 1920s/30s under
GOELRO. The US followed during FDRs Depression public works. The Chinese between 1990s-00s. The greatest value and improvement in standard of living comes from effective policymaking that learns from errors. Don't waste time arguing that some new policy is bad because just like war a plan only survives until the first hail of bullets - what matters far more is do they learn and improve it ? Do they continuously show the ability to execute plans quietly but efficiently ? Do they apply what they learn, elsewhere ? If they do, that is the hallmark of competence.