Quora：印度2万亿GDP美元相当于中国04年的经济水平，但是我却看不到相当于中国04年的生活水平和基础设施。我们该怎么办？
Anonymous
The main reason behind this is democracy.
India has not been able to bridge the infrastructure gap with China even after 20 years of opening up its economy is one of the most staggering failures of a country that wishes to become the next manufacturing superpower. This question has intrigued me since the time I started studying economics and the answer is not as simple as ‘land acquisition is difficult’ that most people answer when asked this question. Pranab Bardhan has an entire chapter dedicated to this question in his book Awakening Giants Feet of Clay : Assessing The Economic Rise of India and China.
Bardhan writes that from the beginning of Chinese economic reforms till the early 1990’s,
India was ahead of China in terms of the standard indexes of many of the infrastructural facilities. For example, at the beginning of the 1990s India’s highway and railway infrastructure was ahead of that in China in terms of route kilometers. [1]
That China can leap past ahead an India well intentioned to develop infrastructure shows both a glaring mismatch between national priorities and a difference in national cultures in India and China with China’s national culture heavily skewed towards what it takes to build infrastructure projects despite its short term drawbacks.
A simple comparison of India’s Geert Hofstede national culture with China and South Korea, two of this century’s biggest infrastructure led growth stories makes the glaring distinction clear.
India scores the lowest among the three in long term cultural orientation which reflects in the way India is governed and what drives policymaking.[2] It is intuitive, India is the only major economy to de facto democratize before becoming rich on a per capita basis.
‘Democracy with Indian characteristics’** comes with the need to think short term. In India where winning elections is prioritized, steps that appease the largest possible number of the electorate is prioritized, things like subsidies take precedence over large infrastructure projects that will take years to build and to break even and generate profit. Only when the need to build a highway is glaringly obvious and is covered by the media ad nauseum and that the general public start to complain about the lack of certain infrastructure is when an election prioritizing regime thinks it is safe enough to build or start building the project.
Projects such as the Delhi metro were not started because the government felt the need to do so, if that were the case, the government would have started them in 1990, they were started when the capital was overrun with cars and it was obvious (and hence safe) to build the metro. The present government led by Narendra Modi is the only government that has a different outlook and it investing in infrastructure, possibly because the stories of India’s disastrous infrastructure are covered widely by the international media and it is clear than China has taken a lead which is near impossible to bridge if we do not start soon.
India’s approach to infrastructure and its drawbacks
The Indian approach to infrastructure is criticized to an extent that The Economic Times (newspaper) a few years back had a slide show titled How China built these and why India never does with photographs of large infrastructure projects in China. The most common differences between the Chinese and Indian approach to infrastructure and why India has lagged behind are:
1.Government’s Spending Priorities: China has aggressively invested its infrastructure so that infrastructure is never a bottleneck for business. It’s high savings rate has helped it in the process which the government has channeled to infrastructure by policy measures. Consequently, China’s spending on infrastructure as a percentage of GDP, a clear indicator of government’s spending priorities is the highest in the world [3].
India’s expenditure on infrastructure at 3.9 % of GDP is a little more than what it spends on subsidies at 2.4 % of GDP. This should be four times this to build internationally competitive infrastructure. Unlike China, our household savings go into gold, Indian households own over $1 trillion worth of gold [4].
This is changing if Modi government’s recent policies are to go by with promised investment of over 70,000 crores in infrastructure and plans to monetize gold which will free further cash [5].
这背后的主要原因是民主。
印度一直未能弥合与中国之间的基础设施差距，即使在经过了20年的经济开放之后，印度仍是希望成为下一个制造业超级大国的国家中最令人震惊的失败者之一。从我开始学习经济学的时候起，这个问题就引起了我的兴趣，答案并不像大多数人回答的“土地收购难”那么简单。Pranab Bardhan在他的著作《觉醒的巨人之足:评估印度和中国的经济崛起》一书中，有整整一章专门讨论这个问题。
Bardhan写道，从中国经济改革开始到1990年代初，
印度在许多基础设施的标准指标方面领先于中国。例如，在20世纪90年代初，印度的公路和铁路基础设施在里程数上超过了中国。
中国能够超越印度，发展基础设施，这显示了印度和中国在国家优先事项和国家文化上的差异。中国的民族文化严重倾向于建设基础设施项目，尽管这在短期内存在缺陷。
简单的对比一下印度的吉尔特·霍夫斯泰德民族文化与中国和韩国的民族文化，这两者是本世纪最大的基础设施领域的两个发展故事，这样一对比区别就很明显了。
三者中，印度在长期文化取向中得分最低，这反映出印度的治理方式和决策的驱动因素。印度是唯一一个在人均富裕前实际上实现民主化的主要经济体。
“印度特色的民主”始于考虑短期因素的需求。在印度，赢得选举是首要任务，因此能安抚尽可能多的选民的措施会受到优先考虑，比如补贴优先于大型基础设施项目，这些项目需要数年时间才能建成并实现盈亏平衡。只有当建设高速公路的需求非常明显，受到媒体报道的影响，公众开始抱怨缺乏某种基础设施的时候。这时候一个选举优先的政权才会认为足够安全去建设或开始建设这个项目。
德里地铁等项目没有因为政府觉得有必要建设而开工,像这种政府本应该在1990年就建设开工的情况,他们在首都到处都是汽车,并且需求很明显(因此安全)时才开始建造地铁。现在纳伦德拉·莫迪领导的政府是唯一有不同看法的一届政府,这届政府对基础设施进行投资,这可能是因为印度灾难性基础设施的故事已被国际媒体广泛报道，显然中国已经领先，如果我们再不尽快开始追赶的话就不太可能赶上中国了。
印度的基础设施建设及其弊端。
印度在基础设施方面的做法在一定程度上受到了批评。《经济时报》(The Economic Times)几年前做了一个幻灯片，标题是“中国如何建造这些建筑”，而为什么印度从来没有在中国拍摄大型基础设施项目的照片。
中国和印度在基础设施建设上的最常见的差异，以及印度落后的原因是:
1。政府的支出重点:中国大力投资基础设施，使基础设施永远不会成为企业发展的瓶颈。中国的高储蓄率帮助其政府通过政策措施将这些资金引导到建设基础设施的过程中。因此，中国在基础设施建设上的支出占GDP的比例，在世界上所有政府支出优先级指标上是最高的。
印度在基础设施建设方面的支出占GDP的3.9%，略高于其在GDP中占2.4%的补贴。要建立具有国际竞争力的基础设施，这个数字应该提高到现在的四倍。与中国不同，我们的家庭储蓄黄金，印度家庭拥有价值超过1万亿美元的黄金。
如果莫迪政府最近承诺投资超过7万个基础设施项目，并计划将黄金货币化，从而获得更多现金的计划能够实施，那么这种情况就会发生变化。
2.Eminent Domain Over Land: Chinese government maintains eminent domain over all land. The state considers it its responsibility to peacefully/forcefully acquire land for development of infrastructure projects, restore and rehabilitate the displaced people. The state uses its power to deter holdouts so that land acquisition does not come in the way of nation building.
For example, when there we talks to develop Pudong in Shanghai into an international financial center, the Shanghai government acquired all the land, rehabilitated the displaced citizens in other parts of Shanghai, employed them in construction companies that were redeveloping Pudong, issued them housing rights in the upcoming housing projects etc. There was resistance but the government’s offer was not one to refuse. In contrast, I have seen slums in the middle of Delhi and Bombay and plans to develop Dharavi have not moved on for two decades. The new LARR Ordinance that wishes to make land acquisition easier for both the government and private corporations is vehemently opposed by most concerned parties [6][7]
Land acquisition however draconian it might be is necessary for infrastructure development. This rent-seeking behavior has to be addressed if India wishes to build large infrastructure projects. India needs strong laws to deter holding on to property in this nascent stage of nation building. China allowed its citizens to sue the government over land acquisition for the first time in 2014 when it can afford to slow down infrastructure growth to accommodate personal liberties [8]
3.A Focus on Pan-India Development : Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s economic reforms once said that some people will get rich first before others. China’s focus on infrastructure development has been regional, they have developed regions that have a comparative advantage over other regions, the easter coast and pearl river delta was developed first and the inland later [9]
*China’s investment clusters. [10]
The intuition is simple, once you develop a cluster, say Shanghai, it starts generating economic output the surplus of which can easily be invested in developing the next best region. India’s infrastructure policy has at least at the central level been pan-Indian, a government cannot deviate from it without being deemed ‘discriminatory’.
Interestingly, Indian infrastructure development is also clustered despite the governments policies. New Delhi-Gurgaon IT belt is the only speck of development in the otherwise rural cow belt, Southern states lead Northern ones by 25 years etc. If this regional development is further supported and prioritized, we can develop infrastructure faster.
4.Financing Methods: Large scale infrastructure projects need sustainable lines of credit some of which can go upto 15 years, only two options can provide this, a national development bank and a well developed bond market. China’s infrastructure development has been heavily financed by China Development Bank the bank that raised funds for the Three Gorges Dam and Shanghai Pudong Airport. It was described as “the engine that powers the national government’s economic development policies”. China also has a better developed bond market where investors can easily hedge their risks against derivatives [11]
India needs both. For the past decade, small infrastructure projects have been funded by private companies but the resources of these corporations are limited and the lump in economic growth has left them highly distressed financially, the PPP model cannot work if the present system of financing remains the same.
Infrastructure firms just do not have enough money [12]
India needs its development finance institution, an India Development Bank, a lender solely for long term infrastructure projects. India has also relied on small state owned banks to lend for infrastructure. An unsustainable policy which brings me to
2。土地征用权:中国政府拥有所有土地的土地征用权。国家认为，它有责任以和平方式/强制性地获得土地发展基础设施项目，并恢复流离失所者的生活。政府利用国家力量来让人们让步，这样土地征用就不会成为国家建设的绊脚石。
例如,当我们谈到把上海浦东发展成为国际金融中心时，上海政府收购了全部土地，将流离失所者安置到上海其他地方生活，在重建浦东的建筑公司雇佣他们，在即将到来的住房项目等。,其他地方使用在建筑公司重新开发浦东,许诺他们在即将建成的住房项目中的住房权力等。有阻力,但政府的条件让人难以拒绝。相比之下，我在德里和孟买的中心看到过贫民窟，计划发展达拉维的计划已经有二十年了。新的LARR条例旨在让政府和私营企业更容易获得土地收购，但大多数有关方面对此强烈反对。
无论如何，土地征用对于基础设施建设都是必要的。如果印度想要建设大型基础设施项目，这种寻租行为必须得到解决。在这个新兴的国家建设阶段，印度需要强有力的法律来消除人们对财产所有权的坚持。2014年，中国首次允许公民在土地征用问题上对政府提起诉讼，因为中国有能力减缓基础设施的增长，以适应个人自由。
3。关注泛印度发展:中国经济改革的设计师邓小平曾经说过，有些人会先致富。中国对基础设施建设的关注一直是区域性的，他们开发的区域比其他地区具有比较优势，东部沿海和珠江三角洲是最先发展起来的，内陆地区后来发展起来。
中国的投资集群。
接下来就很简单了，一旦你开发了一个集群，比如上海地区，它就开始产生经济产出，剩余的资金很容易就可以投资于开发下一个最好的地区。印度的基础设施政策至少在中央层面上是泛印度的，政府不能在不被视为“歧视性”的情况下偏离它。
有趣的是，尽管政府出台了政策，但印度的基础设施建设也聚集在一起。新德里-古尔加翁 IT带是除了农村的养牛带之外唯一一处发展的地带，南部的州在25年之前就领先了北方。如果这个区域的发展得到进一步支持和优先支持，我们就可以更快地发展基础设施。
4。融资方式:大型基础设施项目需要可持续的信贷额度，其中一些项目可能长达15年，只有两种选择可以提供，一是国家开发银行，二是发达的债券市场。中国的基础设施建设得到了中国发展银行的大力资助，该银行为三峡大坝和上海浦东机场筹集资金。它被描述为“为国家政府的经济发展政策提供动力的引擎”。中国还有一个更发达的债券市场，投资者可以很容易地对冲衍生品的风险。
这两者印度都需要。在过去十年中，小型基础设施项目得到了私营企业的资助，但这些公司的资源有限，经济增长缓慢使它们在财政上陷入困境，如果目前的融资体系保持不变，PPP模式(政府和社会资本合作，是公共基础设施中的一种项目运作模式)就无法运作。
基础设施公司没有足够的资金.
印度需要有自己的发展金融机构，一个印度开发银行，一个专门为长期基础设施项目提供贷款的银行。印度还在依靠小型国有银行为基础设施提供贷款。这是一个不可持续的政策。
5.Return on Investment: Large infrastructure projects take years to build and decades to break even. The Chinese government has created ways to channel household savings into long term infrastructure bonds and other investment vehicles so that the government won’t have to worry about short and medium term rate of return on any infrastructure project.
Indian household savings go into unproductive assets. Infrastructure is finance either by deficit or by government banks or by the PPP method. Fiscal prudence is compromised if the deficit remains for a long time, the short term nature of deposits with the government banks makes it not feasible for them to fund large infrastructure projects with no short term returns and the PPP model is suited for projects where some money that starts to flow in is reinvested to make more infrastructure such as highways etc, not for projects such as dams and power plants, short term rate of return is important for all the three.
Dhiraj Nayyar in an excellent editorial in Livemint wrote,
It was always a bad idea to force banks to lend for infrastructure projects. There is a fundamental mismatch between the short-term nature of bank deposits and the long-term nature of infrastructure funding. [13]
India’s political system also deters large scale infrastructure projects. Investing without any tangible rate of return is a common poll issue with which the opposition corners the incumbent regularly. In China, despite the fact that the high speed rail will run in losses for another decade, nobody bats an eye.
6.Catching upto demand: China has always adopted a model of building infrastructure before the demand for it arises. China’s growth has been infrastructure led, not the other way around.
Indian approach to infrastructure on the other hand has been to catch up with demand overtime. India build a four lane diamond quadrilateral and by the time it was over, the demand was for a six lane one, India doubled all major rail lines and the demand increased for a four line track.
7.Development v/s Environment: The Chinese approach to the environment v/s development debate is pretty standard, pollute now, clear the mess later. This is standard economics, environmental damage follows Kuznet’s Inverted U curve, pollutants rise first and as per capita income rises and the country becomes rich, shifts to alternate energy sources and reduces its energy consumption, adopts better technology to treat the effluents, pollutants decline. Economic growth and environmental protection is an old economic trade off that large countries have to make. [15][16]
India on the other hand has some of the most stringent environment protection laws in the world. Focusing too much on the environment leads to cost escalation, cost escalation makes large projects unfeasible. India’s independent judiciary takes special interest in their implementation. It is easy to get a large infrastructure project shelved because of it, the best example being the issue around raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujrat [17].
During a seminar on challenges to India’s growth in Hong Kong, one of the speakers said, ‘India is a third world country with first world ambitions and resources but out of this world environmental ethics’. I am not justifying Chinese approach to the environment, the lax environmental rules have been misused too but the it would not have been able to create the infrastructure needed to sustain such a large population with it. Now that infrastructure is in place, the government is investing heavily in cleaning up the environment.
Conclusion: India cannot build large scale infrastructure projects and China can because their approach towards infrastructure is totally different. For China, it is an engine to economic growth, for India, it has been a consequence of economic growth till now.
India’s pluralistic democracy makes it both tedious and difficult to reach a consensus hence delaying large infrastructure projects.
5.投资回报:大型基础设施项目需要数年时间才能建成，甚至需要数十年才能实现收支平衡。中国政府创造了将家庭储蓄引入长期基础设施债券和其他投资工具的方式，这样政府就不必担心任何基础设施项目的短期和中期回报率。
印度家庭储蓄都投资了非生产性资产。基础设施要么是赤字，要么是政府银行融资，要么是PPP。如果赤字长期存在，财政审慎性就会受到损害，由于政府银行存款的短期性使得它们在没有短期回报的情况下不可能为大型基础设施项目提供资金，PPP模式适合于那些资金流入后可以再投资的项目，例如增加更多的高速公路等基础设施,而不是大坝和电站等项目,短期回报率对于这三者都很重要。
Dhiraj Nayyar在Livemint的一篇优秀社论中写道，迫使银行为基础设施项目放贷一直是个馊主意。银行存款的短期性质与基础设施融资的长期性质之间存在根本性的不匹配。
印度的政治体制也阻碍了大规模基础设施项目的发展。没有任何实际回报率的投资是民意调查中遇到的一个常见问题，反对党经常会在这个问题上与在任总统针锋相对。在中国，尽管高速铁路将在未来10年内亏损，但所有人都能保持镇定。
6。追赶需求:中国一直采用一种在需求出现之前就进行基础设施建设的模式。中国的增长是由基础设施建设带动的，而不是相反。
另一方面，印度在基础设施方面的做法是在需求出现之后才赶紧建设。印度建设了一个名为“钻石四边行”的四条铁路线的计划，当计划结束的时候，需求已经变成了六车道，印度将所有主要的铁路线路车道变成了双轨道，这时候需求又变成了四线轨道。
7.发展vs环境:中国对环境vs发展的讨论是相当标准的，现在污染，以后清理。这是标准的经济学，环境的破坏遵循了Kuznet的倒U曲线，污染物首先上升，随着人均收入的增加，国家变得富裕，转向替代能源，减少能源消耗，采用更好的技术来处理废水，污染物减少。经济增长和环境保护是大国必须做的一项古老的经济活动。
另一方面，印度拥有世界上最严格的环境保护法。过于关注环境会导致成本的增加，成本的增加使得大型项目变得不可行。印度的独立司法机构对大型项目的实施特别感兴趣。一个大型的基础设施项目很容易被搁置，最好的例子就是提高在Gujrat的Sardar Sarovar大坝的高度。
在香港举行的一个关于印度发展挑战的研讨会上，其中一位发言人说：“印度是第三世界国家，拥有第一世界的野心和资源，但超出了这个世界的环境条件。 我不是说中国人对待环境的做法是正确的，环境规则也不公平，不然也不可能创造出维持这么大的人口所需要的基础设施。 现在基础设施已经到位，政府正在大力投资于清理环境。
结论：印度不能建设大型基础设施项目，而中国能，因为他们对基础设施的做法完全不同。 对中国来说，这是经济增长的引擎，对印度来说，这是经济增长的一个后果。
印度的多元民主使得达成共识变得既乏味又困难，因此拖延了大型基础设施项目的建设。