Enter India, Exit China

The progress of Asia’s two giants, China and India, can be neatly encapsulated by the imagery used to portray them. China is usually characterized as a dragon, aggressive and slightly frightening. India, on the other hand, is often described as an elephant—big and powerful, but also lumbering and slightly ungainly.

Unfortunately for India, the caricatures are all too accurate. For the past three decades, China has reigned as the world’s premier emerging economy; India always plodded behind, stumbling in China’s formidable wake. As China raced with fiery purpose from a poor, isolated nation into the world’s second-largest economy, India’s boundless potential remained mostly untapped, its people mired in poverty and its footprint on the global stage barely perceptible.