Why China Surged Ahead, India Stood Still

Questioner: I am Suraj Kumar Das, pursuing my PhD here in Economics. Now I would like to start with a question that touched the heart of every person in this room. Along with us, many countries like China and Japan got their independence or overcame some sort of calamities or adversities. How come they have progressed so far in the world economy while we have lagged behind?

Acharya Prashant: See, what you call progress, measured by many indicators, most importantly GDP, is not something totally external. It is driven by something internal in the first place. So we look at the total production, then consumption, and then we say this is the net economic output. We look at the size of the military. We look at technologies and innovations. We look at the length of railroads. We look at energy and steel production. And in looking at all these things, it is easy to miss the inner driver of external order.

Because when we are talking of external production, then we definitely mean something that comes from a structure, an order, right? It's not like a random tree in the jungle that flowers and fruits at its appointed time. You're talking of roads, you're talking of factories, you're talking of ports and airports, and they require order.

Now, till 1990, India and China were roughly similar in terms of both total GDP and per capita GDP. In fact, India was ahead till the mid-80s in terms of per capita GDP. Then we find China speeding along one road and India languishing behind. India had the democratic road, and China had the state-controlled communist road.

Now, when we talk of democracy, we mean freedom. So ideally we would like to think that the path of freedom, inner freedom, should give better external results also, right? If you have freedom for the individual, all kinds of freedoms enshrined in our Constitution; Article 15, 19, 20, 21 and that entire stretch. You would want to think that where the citizenry is more free, there would be more order on the outside. But that is not necessary.

See, what you have in India is more of an unconscious democracy, and what you have in China is more of a disciplined collectivism. It is not really democracy versus communism. Our democracy is qualified by the word “Unconscious.” We have freedom, but we have freedom without the education on what freedom really means. And when you do not know what freedom really means, then freedom is noise. Freedom is chaos. Freedom will not result in inner order, let alone outer order; and for external progress you require order. Right? You won't even have inner order, how will you have outer order?

Similarly, what you have there is not just communism. You should rather call it the power of enforced discipline, enforced collective discipline, and that’s what you find surging ahead of unconscious freedom. And the surge is evident in all kinds of metrics.

We talked of 1990 when we were comparable. Today they stand at 18 trillion; we are at 4 trillion. In per-capita terms, they are ahead by five times. And you look at any measure of material progress, they are well ahead of us, truly ahead of us.

Because we thought of democracy as something given. We didn’t realize that the human being must be given the power to choose. But alongside, or rather before, the power, he must be given the wisdom to choose.

Democracy is not just about elections or having rights. Democracy is first of all about having the wisdom as to how to choose.

If you do not know how to choose, then instead of order or growth or betterment, all you will get is a hodgepodge, and that is evident here.

You look at the law-and-order indices in China and India, and China does much better than India. The number of murders in India is four times that of China (source: UNODC). Any measure of; I mean, you look at the worker productivity, the average Chinese worker is two-and-a-half times more productive than the average Indian worker. A lot of that has to do with technology also, we understand. A lot of that also has to do with the fact that a lot of our economy is in the informal sector, we understand. But still, two-and-a-half times is a lot.

Even in terms of the number of hours put in per week, the Chinese worker is ahead of the Indian worker by a few hours; though that is not something necessarily welcome or even needed. We do not want to have 50 or 55 hour work weeks. But what remains is that freedom given to someone who does not know the meaning of freedom will not result in something auspicious.

First of all, freedom must be an inner thing. And when freedom is an inner thing, you know where your bondages are. Otherwise freedom becomes the fulfilment of desire.

“I must be free to eat a pizza as per my desire.” And that is your definition of freedom. This is freedom without wisdom and freedom without responsibility. And when you have these things, you will not progress; neither inwardly nor outwardly.

Another thing that we must really think about is education. You name Japan, you name China; you must include the entire Southeast Asia there, Singapore, Taiwan, even countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea; they all got their freedom almost at the same time as India did. In some ways, you can even include Israel. In 1948 they were born, and they were in a pathetic state, you know, because of the Holocaust, and they were not even natives, right? They gathered in Israel from all over the world. So we all started at the same time; India, Southeast Asia, Israel. But one crucial difference between India and the other stories has been the focus on education: primary education, primary enrollment.

We focused a lot on higher education, and that was a wonderful thing to do, right? IITs, this one is a new one but we know how we brought up the so-called temples of modern India in the 1950s and 60s, and that was a beautiful thing. But that should have been accompanied by a stronger focus at the grassroot level. That didn’t happen. So much so that even today India’s literacy rate is just 77%, and China has almost cent percent literacy. That’s a huge difference. Entire Southeast Asia, with a few minor exceptions, has complete literacy, 100% literacy. That’s a big thing.

You know about PISA? P-I-S-A?

Questioner: No, sir.

Listener: The leaning tower.

Acharya Prashant: No, not that Pisa. It’s a Program for Student Assessment. Program for International Student Assessment, right? It assesses students globally on their comprehension skills, whether they can really read…

Questioner: Read and understand.

Acharya Prashant: yes, and science and mathematics. It’s a long-standing program, several decades old.

We participated in it, and then we dropped out and we refused to participate again. The reason: the last time we participated, we barely avoided the last rank and China topped. I suppose only Kyrgyzstan was below us. We were the second last, and China was right at number one. And since then we have adamantly refused to participate in the assessment.

For a few years we said our students are affected by COVID, so we won’t participate. And even this year the PISA assessment is scheduled to take place, India has again opted out. This is the consequence of ignoring primary education, middle education. Our students just don’t hold up. Are you getting this?

And then the Chinese are filing 16 lakh patents every year. We don’t file even one lakh. That’s the state of education here. Public and private sectors combined, they put 2.6% of their GDP into R&D (source: The Times Of India). We put some 0.5% or maybe less than that, I don’t know the latest figures. These things are connected. Do you see this? From where will you get innovation, if your kids are not well educated? And even if they are educated, they are just moving towards the service sector rather than the innovation line. How will you lead the world?

Today we are still building more coal-fired power plants, and China leads the world in renewable energy; though one must qualify that China also leads the world in global carbon emissions. But they are kind of making up for it when it comes to wind, solar, hydro. They are far ahead of not just India but actually the entire world. Last year or last to last, they installed more clean-energy capacity than the rest of the world put together. Do you understand this? It’s a matter of having a clear, educated vision. Do you understand?

Just having democracy will not take you anywhere if those casting their vote are not educated enough. In fact, being free but being unconscious is worse than being a slave. We may debate this. In India, we debate a lot. They act and we debate. And debating is a wonderful thing. I want you to debate with me, definitely, but debating comes with certain ethics, right? If it is seen and shown that a line of argument definitely holds above the rest, then that has to be acknowledged. Somebody has to surrender.

Freedom does not mean freedom for continuous petulance and nonsense. Or does it? I will not agree. Even if you show me facts and figures and concrete proof, I’ll still not agree. Is that freedom?

Questioner: That is the freedom to harm ourselves.

Acharya Prashant: That is the freedom to harm yourself, right. So that is one thing that we are probably failing to acknowledge. You cannot just get over your responsibility by giving somebody choices. You have to also educate him, how to exercise that choice; and we have not been educated in that.

Questioner: So here I would like to bring another aspect. You spoke about unconscious freedom, and in a country like India where we have such diverse cultures in so many states. So here, how do you bring a common ground to this inner environment of the people, and how do you educate them?

Acharya Prashant: See, the biggest minority is the individual himself. In that sense, you can say we have 150 crore diversities. But there is something in common among all of us already. And what is it? Don’t you want to grow? Don’t you want to learn? Don’t you want to explore the Truth? Don’t you want to fly free?

So it is not difficult at all to come to the underlying unifying substratum, right? Superficially, apparently there is a lot of diversity, and we have done well to celebrate that diversity. Wonderful. But as human beings, we do have a common ground that connects all of us. A platform on which we all stand pre-united. We all are creatures of consciousness, are we not?

Listener: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: We are. So that is already available.

Questioner: But then again, looking at the behavior of the masses and the language of leaders, it is easy to see that there is a lot of regionalism. Divisions happen on any basis in India; whether it is linguistic or regionalist or communal. So when we have a diverse culture like this, leaders find it easier to win by dividing than by uniting.

Acharya Prashant: You see, leaders come from the people, and people actually get the leaders they deserve. I believe in that. And leaders can fool a people only when the people are so gullible, right? That’s why leaders love uneducated audiences, don’t they?

The more uneducated, the more you could say traditional, the more closed of mind an audience is, the more the leader is going to smile; because it will be easier to sway them, to condition them, to indoctrinate them, to present anything to them when they are anyway not caring for the facts and figures. So it's not so much about the leader, it is about the population in general. You require an education policy; you require the best minds of the country to be contributing to education.

Questioner: Which is again, that was my question. To clarify my question: how do you find a common thread between all these people? And how do you bind that thread together? Practically, how does it happen?

Acharya Prashant: See, I have forgotten your name, right? That does not mean I need to remember. I don’t even know the names of the friends sitting here. I don’t know much of this audience here. Still, isn’t there a beautiful unifying silence present here? Please tell me. Do I have to connect to you as somebody coming from North India, or somebody coming from another IIT? Do I have to? What is it that connects us right now? A shared search for Truth. Right?

You are here to sincerely explore something, and I am here to sincerely share something and in fact explore with you. The two of us are together in that. So that’s the common ground of being as conscious individuals our species loves to know. We love to explore. We don’t enjoy being lied to. Somebody lies to you, do you enjoy that? No. That’s what connects each one of us. And that is also the antidote to all kinds of regionalism and factionalism. Right?

So, delimitation of parliamentary constituencies: it’s North versus South. Why should there be a fight? Let the Truth decide. Let the facts, figures, and numbers decide. You have the population growth rate, right? You know the literacy rate. You know the per capita income in the various states. You also know how the states have performed on other parameters of human welfare. We know everything.

Why should it be difficult to then come up with a formula that determines the representation of various states in the Parliament? It should not be difficult. And in fact that can be the only unifier; Truth. Apart from the Truth, it'll be very, very difficult to find a common ground on which the two of us can stand together. Getting it? And that Truth later on, as it branches out, can take many names: compassion, love, equality. But the purest name is Truth.

And I enjoy saying, facts are the door to Truth. You cannot come to the absolute transcendental Truth without knowing the facts on the ground. Otherwise you’ll have imaginations. If you do not know facts, you’ll just keep imagining, and your imagination will never tally with mine. And then the two of us will fight.

So, how to keep the country united? Only on the basis of Truth. If you carry your imaginations because you have not been educated deeply enough, and I lean on my imagination because I too do not know or don’t care to know the facts and figures. He will say his ideal is red, and I’ll say my ideal is yellow. And he is coming from his imagination; I am coming from my imagination. Or religious factionalism: you will say your god has four arms, and he will say his god has only two arms. And you’ll say, “No, God needs to have four,” and he’ll say, “God needs to have two.” And there is no way this can be reconciled. And then the two of you will fight, fight to the end, fight to your death.

What can unite us? Only the Truth.

Not the kind of freedom that arises from the center of ego. You remember that, my freedom means I am free to have a pizza at 2 a.m. That is what freedom means to me: “My way or the highway.” That is freedom? No, that is not freedom.

To be free, first of all you have to identify what your internal bondages are. Externally, our Constitution is such a great one, it has bestowed great freedom on us. So externally, obviously we are free. But are we free internally? Do we know of our internal bondages?

Right education takes us there. Fear is an internal bondage. Being prejudiced is another one. Greed is another one. Jealousy is another one. False identification and attachment is another one. And as long as you are internally a slave, and externally you have a lot of freedom, that freedom will just be misused.

And if you widen the context and look at the most severe crisis mankind has faced over several centuries, the Anthropocene, the sixth mass extinction, the climate catastrophe; where is it coming from? Where is the entire climate crisis coming from? Freedom; “I am free to consume, and I will consume. I have my own imaginations about the happy life, the good life, and I’ll pursue my imaginations. I’ll pursue my concepts without bothering to inquire, without bothering to cross-check, without bothering to verify and falsify. I’ll not do any of these. What would I rather do? I’ll pursue my desires and concepts and ideals and dreams.” And what does all of that lead to? Just consumption. And that consumption is what is killing this planet. Right?

Questioner: Yes, sir. So again, we are talking about growing freedom into your conscious choice. Now, when we are addressing the inner environment, how does it happen? Does it start from family, or does it start from education in school? Or does it happen that we wait for an individual to grow up to a certain age, and he is to mature spontaneously?

Acharya Prashant: Spontaneously it doesn't happen. You need to institutionalize it. You cannot rely on the traditional, loose, informal, physical and emotional institution of the family.

The first thing is, it's not going to happen on its own. He is talking about how one person attains the maturity to realize what real freedom is; does it happen automatically with age? One is now 16 or 26, so one has started realizing; you think it's that way? Does it happen? Do people really ripen with age? No. They become experienced but not wise. Experience is not wisdom. You can spend an entire life just sleepwalking, and that will not make you wiser.

It also cannot be just an inherited family value. You cannot say parents will give it to you, because most often parents don't have it even for themselves. When parents don't have it, how will they give it to the kid? So we said it has to be institutionalized. There has to be a system. There has to be a formal system of inner education that allows you to go within, explore, a non-sectarian system, a system of, what you can call inner education or self-education, education of “Who am I?”

Otherwise, all we are dealing with is objects, this object, that object. We have conveniently forgotten that this one (pointing towards oneself) is the subject of all objects. We put our heart and soul and energy and time into everything as if they are all important, and nowhere do we bother to study who we are. And you cannot have inner freedom without knowing who you are, because that's where your bondages are.

The kid is born with bondages. If you don't identify those bondages, how can there be any freedom? There is no possibility. But neither in the family nor in the formal education system are we taught about the self. Education of the self is what is missing, and as long as that is missing, we will remain a flawed and unconscious democracy.

Questioner: I'm a M.tech second-year student. Sir, is democracy a barrier to our country's development and we should have a communist government just like China?

Acharya Prashant: That would be even worse. Don't try that. No. I hope that's not what I have succeeded in communicating; that democracy is not alright, so let's have an authoritarian system. No, not at all. Those who fought for our freedom would say you must have complete freedom. Right now you have?

Questioner: Partial freedom.

Acharya Prashant: Partial freedom. But the answer to partial freedom is not zero freedom. Or is it? What is your answer to partial freedom? Please tell me. Complete freedom. So that's what we need. Yes, we are deliberating on the perils of incomplete freedom. Yes, when you have incomplete freedom, you will find places like China leapfrogging ahead in many ways; that's true, we understand that. But that does not mean that we have to do away with freedom.

Instead, we have to expand freedom. We have to expand freedom and bring it to the inner self. Right now all you have is outer freedom. Please understand, there is nothing in the Constitution that can liberate you from yourself. The Constitution is so that nobody else exploits you. So many provisions in the Constitution, and they are beautiful provisions, their aim is: let no external individual exploit you. So you have fundamental rights, and you have checks and balances at the individual level, at the level of the state government, and central government, everything.

So the Constitution ensures that there can be no external exploitation. But what if one is one's own worst exploiter? Please tell me. What if one is one's own worst exploiter? How will the Constitution help you there? And the Constitution is not even designed for that purpose. you want to exploit him, he can seek legal, constitutional remedy; wonderful! But what if his own messed-up thoughts and desires and concepts and beliefs make him exploit his own life? We are asking: what if he is his own worst enemy? That's when only education of the self can save you.

If you do not know who you are, you will act in ways that will destroy your own self, your life, the nation, and the planet.

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