One of many ways in which the Chinese economy outperformed India's in the last two decades of the 20th century was in reducing poverty. In China, the number of people living on less than $1 a day, adjusted to reflect purchasing power, fell by about 40om, according to the World Bank. In India, the figure dropped by just 7om. There are many explanations for this, such as India's higher birth-rate. But it is nonetheless, for democrats, a puzzle, and something of an embarrassment. India, unlike China, is a vibrant democracy with a proudly robust habit of turfing lousy governments out of office. The poor not only represent a big chunk of the electorate; they also, proportionately, vote more than the rich do. As Larry Diamond, of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, puts it in a recent essay in a collection~* published by the World Bank, one would logically expect such a democracy to choose "leaders, parties and policies that favour poverty reduction". Yet, in this respect, at least, China's unelected heavies have done better.
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