Inida will not catch up on China and I give you one word for reason: race. To this day, no country with dark-skinned majority population has managed to develop into a modern society. If you look at the newly industrialized countries(regions) in Asia, Taiwan, Singapore, Hongkong, S.Korea all have pale.skinned north east asians as majority population, not to mention Japan. Do you think that is a coincidence that the Phillipines have failed to develope a tiger economy despite of having all the same 'ingredients' Taiwan or S.Korea had? In fact, the ranking of Asean countries in GDP per capital fully matches the percentage ranking of chinese as a share of the local population (Singapore > Malysia > Thailand > Indonesia), is that merely a coincidence? generally pale skin equals high IQ, and a society needs to have a 90 average in order to develop. All east asian countries score 100 or above whereas south asian or southeast asian countries all score 90 or less, there is just no comparison.