Fortune projects "a generation or so down the line, it is India that is going to be the Asian tiger that everyone watches."
Much as I would like to see it, I think there may be a big gating factor.
Fortune and other Westerners forget that we have, for the most part, political AND economic democracy. India does have a political democracy (a vibrant one, and an active press to boot), but it does not have an economic democracy. While the middle class has grown nicely in the last decade or so, the poor keep on growing.
For all the continuous improvement and Six Sigma focus of the Indian software industry, there is a Hindu perspective on accepting the way "things were meant to be". That will continue to create lop sided growth and its own set of significant tensions.
We should continue to beat up China for its lack of political democracy, but I would suggest it will have a much more of an economic democracy in a generation.
